Superwomen of Eva: Legacies: New Daughter of Krypton
by Cyclone
Summary: Doomed planet, desperate scientists, last hope.
1. Issue 1

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_New Daughter of Krypton #1_

It started shortly after the disastrous activation test of Unit 00. Fortunately, by some miracle, the First Child was uninjured, but there was still quite a mess to clean up, and as he was Vice Commander, supervising that task fell to Fuyutsuki. He stood at the bottom level of Test Chamber 01 and gave the mess a critical eye. The chamber wasn't far from the Evangelion cages, the walls lined with expensive sensor equipment to detect any unexpected malfunction.

_For all the good that did,_ he mused sardonically. They certainly hadn't needed any of those sensors to detect _this_ problem, and many of them were thoroughly smashed when Unit 00 went berserk.

"Vice Commander?" a voice called out, pulling his attention from his thoughts.

"Yes, Lieutenant Ibuki?" he replied, looking over to the mousy technician near the entry plug.

"I think..." she said hesitantly, "I think you should see this." She gestured to the entry plug's interior.

Fuyutsuki frowned, then nodded and walked over. He peered inside.

"My God..."

* * *

Fuyutsuki was still very uncertain about what he was about to broach to the First Child, but it fit. The crushed control handles and mangled internal hatch levers in the entry plug stood in mute testimony to what had happened, and more importantly he _knew_ not only the truth about Unit 01 and Ayanami, but also the link between AT fields and the world's greatest hero. He had, in fact, helped formulate AT field theory from their research into his physiology at STAR Labs back in the day.

He gave the door three quick raps.

"Enter."

He opened the door to Ayanami's apartment with more than a little distaste as he wondered again how Gendo could allow her to live in such a state. The fact that the whole area had been flagged for demolition and urban renewal did little to assuage his concerns; he made a mental note to check what Gendo planned if the demolition work moved faster than anticipated and actually finished before the scenario reached completion.

"Ayanami."

"Vice Commander."

"Some things regarding Unit Zero's failed activation have come to my attention."

* * *

Ayanami Rei sat on her bed, pondering what the Vice Commander had told her. Off to the side was information he had provided her with for further research. Sitting on top was an old newspaper clipping with a picture of a man dressed in red and blue lifting a car over his head.

Intellectually, she understood the connection, and that man was proof that the AT fields could function in that fashion, despite STAR Labs and Nerv's inability to replicate it on such a small scale.

Of course, the Vice Commander had said it was only a hypothesis, that he was only informing her so she could adapt in case he was right. She tilted her head and reached out to the end of the bed, clasping her hand over the steel frame, and squeezed.

The metal shrieked as it crumpled in her hand.

* * *

The next morning, Rei opened her eyes. There was something different about the ceiling, something... unfamiliar. It took her several long seconds to pinpoint what it was.

It was a good meter closer than usual. She tilted her head and looked down.

"This bears further research," she concluded, eyebrow cocked.

Not the least of which being figuring out how to get back down from where she floated a meter above her bed.

Clearly, this new ability did not require any physical stimulus, so she tried envisioning herself floating downward, then thought about falling. A seed of frustration began taking hold, and finally, she rolled over to face the wall and shoved hard against it at an angle.

Crunch!

Thump!

CRASH!

"Ouch."

* * *

Rei continued studying the research materials the vice commander had provided. They consisted of everything from newspaper clippings to magazine articles to interview transcripts. She needed to learn more.

Which brought her here, to the vice commander's office.

"Vice Commander."

"Rei," Fuyutsuki greeted her with a warm smile, rising to his feet. "What brings you here?"

"I have attained additional evidence supporting your hypothesis regarding the Unit Zero activation test."

His eyes widened marginally, and he quickly ushered her in, closing the door behind her. He reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a small scanner, with which he quickly swept the room for listening devices. If true, this wasn't something he wanted Seele learning of.

"What happened?" he asked as he tucked the scanner back into the drawer, finally satisfied the room was secure.

"I awoke two days ago floating one meter above my bed."

He slumped back into his chair. "I see."

"I have spent the past two days examining the research material you provided me with."

"And?"

"They have not provided sufficient insight into accessing any additional abilities I may possess."

"Well, if you need more information, it shouldn't be hard to find it," he mused aloud. "Keep researching. No need to limit yourself to what I've provided."

"Understood. I am puzzled, however, by his actions."

"What actions?" Fuyutsuki asked, frowning as he tried to recall anything unusual about Superman's activities.

"His activities prior to Second Impact," she clarified. "He engaged in a number of conflicts with criminal enterprises in Metropolis as well as disaster relief efforts worldwide despite receiving no compensation for any of his efforts." She paused, then added, "Why did he sacrifice himself the way he did? He was not replaceable."

"Not like I am" remained unsaid.

Fuyutsuki gave her a long look, then picked up one of the framed photos from his desk. It wasn't the one he usually found himself looking at, of himself, Gendo, and Yui just prior to the Unit 01 contact experiment. No, this was an older one, from his days at STAR Labs in Metropolis, before Second Impact. It was a press photo for the Daily Planet, featuring himself; an old colleague, Dr. Emil Hamilton; and Superman.

"Because he was a good man," he finally answered with a sigh. "Superman is... _was_ an icon, a beacon of hope for a better future, and the world is a darker place without him."

"Then why did he not preserve himself?" she persisted.

"Because if he didn't try, he would've tarnished that symbol."

She frowned. "I do not understand."

"I know," he said, still gazing at the photo with regret.

There was a long moment of silence as Rei tried to interpret that response into something applicable. She failed.

"Does this alter the scenario?"

He looked up, placing the photo back down. "Only if you allow it to."

"I see."

She did not.

* * *

As per the vice commander's instructions, Rei began looking into further research, as her continued attempts to control her ability to fly had met with little success. The possibility that he hadn't meant practical experimentation did not cross her mind, nor did it occur to her to consider what the Nerv Department of Security Intelligence, aka Section Two, would do, but they had long since dismissed observing the First Child as a do-nothing job, only occasionally glancing at the entrance to her apartment building while she was home. As the area she lived in was quite deserted, this was typically sufficient.

So no one noticed when Rei threw herself off the roof.

She fell perhaps five meters before stabilizing. As she floated, she considered her situation. She experimentally moved her limbs around, trying to see what effect that had on her position. Nothing. She envisioned herself moving upward and was surprised to find herself floating upward exactly as she had envisioned it.

_I wonder how fast I can go..._ she mused.

Crack-BOOM!

Section Two Agent Miramoto looked up from the crossword he was working on. "Was that thunder?"

"Probably just a car back firing. You're not doing that crossword in ink, are you?"

* * *

Dr. Akagi Ritsuko looked up as she waited. With Unit 00 offline and the timing of the Angels' return uncertain, Nerv needed to get another Eva up and running as soon as possible, and that meant Unit 01. The only thing missing now was their pilot.

The door opened, and Ayanami entered, punctual as ever. Ritsuko looked up... and froze.

There was something very, very... _off_... about the First Child. The girl looked even more disheveled than usual, her hair a complete mess. Her face looked... brighter, somehow. It took Ritsuko a moment to realize she was actually _smiling_. It wasn't much of a smile, barely visible, but it was there. And she was rocking ever so slightly back and forth on the balls of her feet.

"All right," she said, setting her clipboard aside. "What's got you so happy today?"

"Recent experimentation has yielded promising results," Ayanami replied, a hint of excitement in her voice.

Ritsuko closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. _I do _not_ need this today._ There was only one thing she could think of that would yield _that_ kind of reaction.

"See me after the activation test," she said firmly, "and whatever you do, don't let the commander know what you've been doing in your free time." She shook her head. "He'd have an aneurysm," she muttered under her breath.

"Understood, Doctor Akagi."

* * *

Rei eased into the entry plug of Unit 01, inhaling the familiar scent of LCL. The sounds around her faded and muffled as she settled in, trying to connect with the Evangelion, in a process not too dissimilar from her earliest memories, inherited from the first.

This felt... different from Unit 00. The link to Unit 00, despite the problems, felt easier, more natural, even as she was fighting it for control. Here, it felt oddly sluggish, like it wasn't even aware of her presence.

"Absolute borderline cleared. Synch ratio holding at... twenty-two percent. Promising for a first time. Rei, how's it feel in there? Anything unusual?"

"No, Doctor Akagi."

"Excellent."

* * *

Rei waited patiently by Dr. Akagi's office as instructed. The activation test had proceeded without incident. It wasn't long before she saw her power walking down the hallway, a package wrapped in a plastic bag tucked under her arm.

"Doctor Akagi, I-"

"Here," the scientist said, shoving the package into her arms and entering her office. She paused in the doorway and added, "And I don't _ever_ want to hear about this again. If you have any questions, ask Doctor Hikawa." She slammed the door shut.

Rei blinked, then peered into the plastic bag. There was book - yellow and black, entitled "Sex for Dummies" - and a box marked "Nerv Brand Condoms."

Mystified, Rei tucked them both away and set her puzzled thoughts aside. She had much more important things to do, like get home so she could go flying again.

She couldn't _wait_ to go flying again. And if Section Two noticed an unusual bounce in her step? Well, she _was_ a teenage girl.

* * *

Dr. Hikawa Takao stared across his desk at the bluenette sitting before him. As a former JGSDF officer, he had seen a lot. As Nerv's Chief Medical Officer, he knew things most people didn't. He knew Ayanami Rei was not normal. He knew she had very specific and peculiar medical needs. He knew her physiological baselines were atypical for a healthy human, let alone a fourteen year old girl. He knew there were things about Nerv - about Ayanami - that were classified well above his pay grade.

To be frank, he had long suspected she wasn't entirely human. To have it confirmed was...

He reached over and popped open a bottle of ibuprofen. He was going to need it.

"Am I actually cleared for this?" he asked after downing four of the 200mg pills. While it was possible she was lying, said possibility was quickly dismissed from his mind. Such an extravagant claim would serve no purpose, and Ayanami Rei was not prone to doing anything without purpose.

"Doctor Akagi advised me not to discuss this matter further with her or the commander and to direct any future inquiries to you."

Dr. Hikawa slumped back in his chair, dragging his hand over his face. "Of course she did." _Why_ she would tell her something like that was beyond him. What on Earth made her think he was at all qualified to discuss Kryptonian physiology?

_Suck it up, soldier,_ he berated himself, his mental voice echoing his DI from basic. _You've got a job to do._

"I'll have to get some reference material," he said finally. "Until then, I can only caution you on using your... abilities. The potential for collateral damage is... significant."

"Understood."

* * *

With that route of inquiry on hold, Rei retreated back to the resources the vice commander had provided her with: newspaper clippings, press releases, interviews. She had long since memorized every shred of relevant data about Superman, but she felt there was another avenue of approach.

She spread the various documents across her bed - making a mental note to get a table if this was going to become a regular occurrence - and traced her finger across them. Nearly all the articles were from Metropolis. The vast majority of them were from a single periodical. Most of them had the same name in the byline.

Clark Kent.

Of course, a quick search from her computer terminal at school proved that to be a dead end as well. Clark Kent had gone missing some time around Second Impact and was long presumed dead.

His wife - and, more importantly, partner - on the other hand...

* * *

A/N: This is as much Cody MacArthur Fett's story as it is mind. The cover pencil art is by Zair-Dacorus.


	2. Issue 2

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_New Daughter of Krypton #2_

"It's broken through the coastal defense line!"

The senior UN general of the forces defending Tokyo-3 ignored the panicked yapping from the other UN generals and glowered at the video feed they were receiving from the AWACS plane as the seemingly unstoppable creature drew inexorably closer. His name was Nathan "Hardy" Hardcastle, and he'd seen more than his fair share of supposedly unstoppable creatures.

But none of them had shrugged off _this_ much firepower.

"Have the First and Fourth Armored intercept and engage in a fighting retreat," he ordered. "Get the One-Oh-Seventh Bomber Wing in the air. Coastal Batteries Three and Four should still have an angle; keep pounding it."

That got his aides under some semblance of control. _Damn pansies,_ he thought disdainfully. He hadn't been too keen on a UN posting - it meant putting up with aides who were political appointees from their respective nations rather than people he knew and trusted - but there were precious few with his experience at fighting the inhuman. He took a moment to shoot a glare at the two men silently watching from the back of the command center.

_At least the alien wasn't sucking up taxpayer money._

A brilliant flash of light drew his attention back to the video feed.

"We just lost the Fourth Armored! They've been wiped out!"

"One-Oh-Seventh reports ready to engage!"

"All ground units, disengage," he ordered. "Have the One-Oh-Seventh deploy special package one."

The guns went silent, petering out as the troops received their orders, and the bombers overhead released the first special package. Several missiles rocketed toward the Angel, slamming into it before detonating. A pale blue gas billowed out of the warheads before ice began to crystallize on the creature's surface. Soon, it was fully encased...

...for about thirty seconds, before it broke free.

"Have the One-Oh-Seventh withdraw and prep package two. Bring up the Eighth Special and the Thirty-Third Artillery, and have the First Armored switch from APDS to HEAT rounds. Coordinate for time on target fire."

Five minutes later, artillery and tank shells began hammering the Angel as eight powerful lasers burned through the air, converging on its chest. Smoke from the exploding shells obscured the Angel from view.

"The Eighth is reporting heat sinks at maximum capacity."

"Get me a visual!" Hardy barked. "Switch to infrared!"

Moments later, the screen changed, filtering out the smoke for a thermal image. The creature's chest glowed white hot, but otherwise...

"Minimal effect, sir. Forward observers report that, aside from some light scoring, the Angel is undamaged."

"Damn it," Hardy cursed. Had he been anyone else, he might have considered continuing the bombardment, but hard-earned experience had taught him that that would just be throwing away thousands of lives. "All units, withdraw. Have the One-Oh-Seventh deploy package two."

* * *

Ikari Shinji had to admit, Miss Misato had chosen a rather good vantage point from which to view the giant monster. Unfortunately, he wasn't in the right frame of mind to really appreciate that, as he was considerably less than thrilled about having a front row seat to a kaiju attack. For her part, the captain was peering through a pair of binoculars as the smoke started to clear. Shinji could dimly see one of the bombers that had flown off now circling back around.

"Oh, my God, that's an N-Two missile!" Misato swore. "Get down!"

Half-buried under the older woman, Shinji saw a faint flash of light. This was followed seconds later by a booming roar as the air rippled with the shockwave, sending the car rocking back and forth... but thankfully not flipping it over.

"Damn it!" Misato hissed, dropping back into her seat. "We have to get to headquarters!"

* * *

Gendo watched as the UN generals - save Hardcastle - cheered and gave each other self-satisfied - and quite premature - congratulations.

"AWACS feed coming back online..."

"My God..."

Hardcastle had picked up the phone, apparently intent on taking direct command.

"Estimate eighteen percent reduction in mass," came the report. "The Angel has stopped moving. It appears to be regenerating."

Gendo hid his satisfaction. He knew it was inevitable, that conventional forces could not stand against an Angel. Their casualties, bad as they were, would have been much worse had it not been for Hardcastle.

The general hung up the phone and turned his attention to Gendo. "All right, Ikari," he said. "Your fancy robot's got two hours to take that thing out before we bomb it back to hell."

Gendo suppressed a derisive snort. "After all this, do you really think that would work?"

"One N-Two warhead blew away eighteen percent of its mass," Hardcastle said. "We've got twenty more on the way: ten to have a decent margin of error and ten more just to be sure. If that thing isn't dead when those bombs get there, we're dropping them, regardless of what else is in the blast radius."

"I see," Gendo said. "We will deploy Unit One."

* * *

Rei sat in the entry plug and gingerly took hold of the control handles, careful not to damage anything with her newfound strength. Her synch ratio with Unit 01 was not ideal, but it was sufficient for combat. In theory.

"Unit One, launching!" Lieutenant Ibuki reported. Rei felt the shift as the rails launched the Evangelion to the surface.

This catapult was in the outermost ring, at the very edge of Tokyo-3. Rei could see the Third Angel in the distance, recovering from the damage the UN forces had inflicted upon it. It was still within range of her umbilical, though just barely.

Approaching one of the weapon lockers, she drew forth an MM-170 semi-auto/pump-action 500mm smoothbore. Racking a canister round into the chamber, she turned and charged the Angel.

* * *

Hardy watched as the purple monstrosity - allegedly on their side - charged the Angel, massive shotgun in hand. It loped across the landscape, eating up distance, before launching itself into the air, taking aim...

...and getting blasted by the same kind of cruciform energy blast that had wiped out the Fourth Armored.

"I need a revised ETA on those bombers."

* * *

Rei felt a dull ache. Were her synch ratio with Unit 01 higher, it would likely have hurt a lot more. Sluggishly, she brought Unit 01 back to its feet. Her synch ratio of ~25% was well past the absolute borderline and considered acceptable for combat conditions.

Just barely.

On the other hand, Sachiel was hardly in top form either, still reeling from the N2 strike; the way it swayed as it rose to its full height gave that away. She recovered the gigantic shotgun and, squaring Unit 01's feet, charged again, expanding her AT field to counter the Angel's. As Sachiel lashed out with one arm, Rei threw Unit 01 to the side, bringing the MM-170 up and firing.

Canister rounds blasted out of the smoothcore cannon, the casing falling away as designed, releasing a cluster of submunitions. As the projectiles struck, percussion detonators triggered, setting off the explosive cores in each submunition, to devastating effect.

The Angel sagged, listing to one side as it flailed its arms, catching Unit 01 across the shoulder before Rei could evade, twisting it halfway. Rei ignored it and lurched forward, reaching up to draw Unit 01's progressive knife from its shoulder mounted pylon. Taking care to reverse her grip on it without dropping it, she brought the prog knife down on the Angel's core.

* * *

Lois Lane had had better days. She'd also had a _lot_ of worse days, true, but that was quite some time ago. The story of the century was in Tokyo-3, but the editor had grounded her. She supposed Perry had a point. She just _wasn't_ as young as she used to be. Still, it stung.

She still did what she could, racking up the international minutes, but Nerv and the UN kept stonewalling her. Even worming out Hardcastle's contact information hadn't worked. Not that she'd really expected much out of "Hardass" Hardcastle.

She froze as she glanced at the glass doors leading to the balcony. Her apartment was a good twenty storeys up, and the balcony was typically well-lit at night by the security lights below. Currently, the thinner set of drapes was closed, and an unmistakeable shadow had just flitted across them, landing gently on the balcony.

"Clark?" she breathed.

It only took a second for her to realize it couldn't be Clark. Once the billowing - cape? - settled, it was clear that, whoever it was, was considerably shorter and of slighter build.

Warily, she pushed the drapes aside, then tilted her head curiously. It was a girl, no more than fourteen on the outside, with blue hair, red eyes, and a thin blanket wrapped around her. It was the blanket that had given her silhouette the impression of a cape. Opening the door, Lois folded her arms.

"Okay, kiddo, you've got my attention."

* * *

"Aaand you can't tell me why you think you're developing Kryptonian powers," Lois said, leaning back in her chair. She had turned the chair around to face away from the small desk so she could face the girl, who was now seated on the couch, looking positively adorable.

The girl - Ayanami Rei - nodded. "I have reason to believe it is related to the AT field theory developed by STAR Labs in order to explain some of Superman's powers."

"All right, fine," Lois said, "so why contact me?"

"Next to your late husband, you are the foremost expert on Superman," Rei said. "If I am to continue my duties, I will need to learn to control these abilities."

"And exactly what duties are you talking about?"

"I am an Evangelion pilot."

"_Reaaally?_" _That_ certainly perked up Lois's interest. "Tell you what, kid. Let's talk, and maybe you can tell me something about that battle while we're at it."

The girl paused, considering the offer, then nodded. "That is acceptable."

"Okay," Lois said, grabbing a notepad and pen and setting her smartphone to record. "Let's start off with something simple. You ask me a question, then I'll ask you a question. Fair enough?"

Rei nodded.

"So, shoot."

"How strong will I get?"

"Whoo," Lois blew out a sigh. "You don't start off easy, do you, kiddo? In all the years I knew Superman, I don't think he's ever really hit an upper limit. They used to say he was more powerful than a locomotive. By the end, he was probably several times as strong as that big robot you pilot."

"The Evangelion is technically a cyborg."

"Oh?" Lois perked up, jotting it down. "Uh, right, of course. So, my turn. What the hell was that giant monster out there?"

"That was an Angel, designated Sachiel," Rei answered. "How many powers am I likely to develop?"

"Hope you don't have an early day tomorrow," Lois said dryly, "'cause _that_ one's gonna take a while."

* * *

"All right," Lois said. "Last question from me." They had been going back and forth for several hours, through which she gleaned what she was certain was a fairly complete accounting of the battle with Sachiel. "Now that you're developing these powers, what are you going to do with them?"

"I..." Rei trailed off. "I do not know."

"Well, think about it, kiddo," she said. "You have those powers for a reason. It'd be a shame to waste 'em."

"I... will take that under advisement."

"Listen, kiddo, you ever need an ear to listen, just stop by."

Rei nodded. "I will do that."

* * *

Ikari Gendo had not had a good week. First, Unit 00's activation test had turned into a disaster - it was a miracle no one was seriously hurt - then one of Nerv's civilian backers had somehow caught wind of the activation failure and... _pressured_ him into bringing Shinji in as a back up pilot at least. And now this. This, however, was something he could address.

He gazed across his desk, hands interlaced in front of his face at the man in charge of the Nerv Department of Security Intelligence, better known as Section Two.

"Agent Chiron, correct if I'm wrong, but it is my understanding that Sachiel's attack was deemed classified."

Chiron Iwao was not an easy man to intimidate, and he answered to higher masters than the Nerv Commander. Even so, the atmosphere of the office was difficult to overcome. Resisting the urge to tug at his collar he nodded. "That is correct, Commander."

"And it _is_ the responsibility of the Nerv Department of Security Intelligence to secure classified information, correct?"

"Yes, Commander."

"Then would you care to explain this?" Gendo asked, pushing the document across his desk.

Chiron didn't need to see it to know what it was. It was a copy of that morning's Daily Planet, Japanese edition. Accompanying a very blurry photo of Sachiel was a big bold headline: "ATTACK ON TOKYO-3!"

At that point, Chiron would have cheerfully strangled Lois Lane. Instead, he said stiffly, "I cannot, Commander. We are investigating every possible lead to identify the leak. However, it should be noted that a military operation of this scale is not something that can be completely covered up. This is as much a PR issue as it is a security issue. Commander."

"I will take that into consideration, Agent," Gendo said. "It was only a matter of time before the truth about the Angels became public knowledge. It seems we will have to accelerate our contingencies."

* * *

"M-Miss Ayanami?"

Rei stopped, just shy of entering the school grounds, then turned.

"Yes?" It took her a moment to recognize the boy. She had seen him all of once: He had been at Nerv when Unit 01 was recovered after the battle.

He looked around nervously, then said, "I just... I just wanted to introduce myself. I-I'm Ikari Shinji, and I've been chosen to pilot Eva."

"I see," she said. So this was the Third Child, the commander's son.

"Well, umm, it was nice meeting you."

She nodded, then turned and continued on her way, dismissing him from her thoughts as she headed to the class room and took her customary seat by the window. She had enough on her mind right now, and any thoughts of the Third Child would only-

"Hey, uh, Miss Ayanami?"

She turned. "Mister Suzuhara, Mister Aida," she said, acknowledging the pair.

"I heard you were the pilot of that giant robot," Suzuhara said. "I just..." he hemmed and hawed for a while, before Aida jabbed him.

"Iwantedtothankyou," Suzuhara said.

She blinked.

"I do not understand."

"I wanted to thank you," he repeated. "Listen, my sister got caught outside the shelter - my fault, really - but you... you killed that monster before it could even get to the city. So... thank you."

"...you are welcome," she said finally. She turned her gaze back to the window, studiously ignoring Aida.

Hopefully, the rest of the day would remain uneventful.

It was somewhat less uneventful than she would have liked.

* * *

Time ticked by, and at lunch, much to her chagrin, she came to the realization that, amidst the concerns over her new abilities, she had forgotten to bring any. She wasn't particularly hungry, but she was pondering what to do about that when her thoughts were once again interrupted.

"M-Miss Ayanami?"

She looked up to see the Third Child and Suzuhara, with Aida off to the side. "Yes?"

"I noticed-" Pilot Ikari started, before Suzuhara elbowed him.

"_We_ noticed you didn't have any lunch," Suzuhara said.

Pilot Ikari nodded mutely. "If-if you like, you can have some of ours." The other two nodded.

She opened her mouth to reply when a moment of vertigo struck her, and their clothes faded from sight, giving her an excellent view of the trio's... assets. Her cheeks suddenly felt warm.

"Miss Ayanami? Are you all right?" Suzuhara asked, shaking her out of her momentary stupor, their clothes rematerializing. "You look a little, I dunno, flushed."

"I-I am well, Mister Suzuhara," she stuttered. "Thank you for your concern."

"_Would_ you like some of our lunches?" Aida asked, dragging them back to the reason they had approached her.

"I dislike meat."

"Okay," Suzuhara said. "We can work with that, _can't we, guys?_" he glowered at the other two. After a quick shuffle, Rei found herself with a makeshift meal slightly larger than what she would have made for herself had she remembered.

It felt... nice.


	3. Issue 3

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_New Daughter of Krypton #3_

Lois Lane was not naturally a light sleeper. Still, spend a few years with a target on your back, and you'd be amazed at the habits you'd pick up. It took her a moment to register what had awakened her - a tapping on the window - as she picked herself up off the floor (where instincts had thrown her), joints protesting. She turned on the light.

She was _not_ in the mood for this crap. The all-nighter she'd pulled with that Rei girl was playing havoc with her sleep schedule, and getting woken up at - she checked the glowing LEDs on her night stand - 3:22 AM was not helping.

Lois pulled the drapes back, then opened the window, allowing her visitor in.

"Rei," she said, "I hope there's a good reason you woke me up at three in the morning."

"I came here straight from school," the odd little Kryptonian girl said as she touched down in her bedroom. "With what happened today, it seemed... urgent I speak with you."

"Come on," Lois said, waving for her to follow. "Let's go to the kitchen. At this hour, I'm gonna need coffee. I'll whip up some hot chocolate for you."

"'Hot... chocolate'?"

"You've never had hot chocolate before? Well, you're in for a treat."

* * *

Due to both her nature and her position at Nerv, even Rei could not have avoided running into the concept of heaven. She did not truly understand the concept; for her, it was an intellectual exercise.

Now, however, she understood, and if there was a heaven, it had hot chocolate in it.

"So, wha-"

Rei held up a finger as she kept her attention on her hot chocolate.

"Oookay then... I can wait," Lois said, leaning back against the counter and nursing her own mug.

After several minutes of silence, Rei had finished her hot chocolate, and she broke the silence.

"Today, I developed X-ray vision," she said.

"Ah," Lois ahhed, nodding. "And I'm guessing you got an eyeful of some hunky guys."

"How did you-?"

"You're blushing, kiddo. What? You never been horny before in your life?"

"'Horny'?"

"Oh, boy."

"Judging from your reaction and the context, I assume you mean something other than spontaneously growing horns from my head?"

"This is gonna be a long night."

* * *

A few hours later, Lois and Rei were in Centenniel Park. Rei found the "nickel-and-dime tour" Lois offered, particularly her commentary, to be quite fascinating. Not that Lois was saying anything at the moment. She was too busy eating a Big Belly Burger Angus Giant. Rei had a Tofu Special, and it was... good.

She was learning a great deal from Ms. Lane, and surprisingly little of it involved her new abilities.

At the moment, Rei was wearing a long blonde wig and a pair of sunglasses to help conceal her identity. Also a light blue cotton dress borrowed from Lois. And a straw sun hat.

She liked the hat.

As she idly ate the tofu burger, she found herself gazing at Centenniel Park's most memorable landmark. The bronze memorial statue towered above them, the unmistakeable image of Superman, standing tall and proud, hands on his hips.

"I honestly don't think he'd appreciate that."

Rei blinked and looked back at Lois. "I do not understand."

"The memorial statue," Lois said. "For all his power, for all the good he did, all the lives he saved, he still always saw himself as just a man. A man with incredible gifts, yeah, but still just a man, one with a duty to use them for good."

"But he wasn't a man," Rei found herself saying. "He was an alien." She recalled the vice commander's words. "A symbol. A god."

"To others, yeah," Lois agreed, "but he never saw himself that way. I don't think he _could_ and stay sane."

Rei looked down thoughtfully. "So, what does that make me?"

"Whatever you want to be, kiddo. Whatever you want to be."

_What_ do_ I want to be?_ Rei wondered.

* * *

That Saturday, after school, Rei found herself back at Nerv once more, alongside Pilot Ikari, in one of the conference rooms.

"All right, kids," Captain Katsuragi said, "another new addition to the team just arrived today. She'll be overseeing the bulk of your training, particularly in weapon use and hand to hand combat."

"I think I can introduce myself, Captain," an amused voice interjected from just outside the door. The voice was female and strong, with a slight Greek accent, and in stepped the tallest woman Rei had ever seen.

The woman gave them a friendly smile. "My name is Diana Prince."

* * *

Ms. Prince proved to be an exceptional instructor. By the next day, she had already worked out a rigorous new training regimen for the pilots. Within a few days, the two pilots had already gotten a few basic moves down, and the exercise regimen promised to have positive results on Pilot Ikari within a matter of weeks or months.

Throughout all this, Rei continued to devour all the available data on Superman. In conjunction with her discussions with Ms. Lane, she could only come to one inescapable conclusion.

She checked the time and headed for the window. It was time to test that conclusion.

* * *

"Okay," Lois said as she drove them out of Metropolis, "now I know you didn't just come from school this time. So I gotta ask: What's the deal with the uniform?"

Sitting in the car, watching as they pulled into a small, deserted air field, Rei was a little surprised by the question. "I have no other clothing."

Lois shot her a quick frown. She parked the car near a hangar. The two of them climbed out, and Lois gave Rei a good long look. "You're actually serious, aren't you? We're gonna need to get you some new clothes."

"Understood," Rei said. "However, I have a question."

"Shoot."

"Why did you not inform me that Clark Kent was Superman?"

To Lois's credit, she barely missed a beat. "Didn't seem important, really." She sighed. "Clark's dead, Rei, and nothing's going to change that. So what if he _was_ Superman? What difference does that make in the here and now?"

"I see. And what is our purpose here?"

"Well, before we go shopping, though, we're going to the Fortress. It's time you learned more about Krypton," Lois said, punching a code into a security panel.

Rei felt her heart accelerate slightly. The Fortress of Solitude had been mentioned a few times in the various news articles, referenced by Superman as his home. No one was certain where exactly it was, though theories abounded, ranging from deep under the ocean to the far side of the moon.

"Come on," Lois said as the door ground open. "Plane's in here."

Rei blinked.

"This hangar is empty."

"Invisible jet," Lois explained. "Wedding gift from Wonder Woman."

* * *

Lois flew the invisible jet with practiced skill. She first flew east, then turned northward, over the Atlantic. It didn't seem to fly as fast as she could, but Rei was fairly certain it would easily outpace a commercial jet liner.

As they neared what remained of the polar ice cap, Rei felt a brief moment of alarm when the reporter sent the aircraft into a steep dive straight into the Arctic Ocean. As the plane submerged, Lois took a quick glance up over to her.

"You don't scare easy, do you, kiddo?"

Rei did not respond.

Lois shook her head and flipped a switch. Lights flared to life, lighting up the water ahead of them as she negotiated the tight quarters of the submerged tunnel. A few minutes later, the top of the invisible jet broke the surface of the water again, and Lois opened the canopy.

As they climbed out, Rei looked around. They were in what looked like a small submarine dock inside an icy cavern. A door in one frozen wall with a welcome mat looked noticeably out of place.

"Key's under the welcome mat," Lois said as she moved to secure the invisible jet.

Had Rei had a more normal upbringing, she would have questioned whether Lois was joking or not. As it was, even she found it unusual. Shrugging nonchalantly, Rei pulled up the corner of the welcome mat and reached for the key.

She blinked in surprise, then reached down with her other hand. She heaved, and one end of the key lifted off the ground... before slamming back down.

"I'm surprised you can lift it up even that much," Lois said, coming up behind her.

"This seems inefficient."

"It's a decoy," Lois said with a shrug, "and a bit of a joke, really, made of dwarf star matter."

Rei frowned. "Should its immense gravitational field not affect us merely by our proximity?"

"Don't ask me," Lois said defensively. "There's Kryptonian tech keeping us from being crushed, so I understand. Follow me; we'll take the side entrance."

"I see."

The side door was cleverly hidden in the ice. Although, as she looked closer, it occurred to her that, appearances aside, the "ice cavern" was almost certainly not actually ice. As they entered, an image flared to life. Suddenly, Superman stood before them.

"Lois," Superman said, "if you're seeing this, then I-"

The reporter ignored the hologram and walked right through it. The image scrambled for a moment, then faded. Rei blinked, then followed.

"What was that?" Rei asked.

"His goodbye," Lois hiccupped. She sniffed a bit, then added quietly, "I... haven't figured out how to turn it off yet."

Rei wisely stayed silent. Soon, they emerged into a much larger cavern. Towering over them were statues of a man and a woman, a model of an unfamiliar planet suspended above their heads.

Another hologram flickered to life. Lois stopped, surprised.

"What is this?"

"I don't know," Lois answered, shaking her head. "I've never seen one activate here before."

"Sometimes, I wonder about Batman," the hologram spoke, scratching the back of his head bashfully, "but if you're seeing this, I guess it means he was right." It paused, then added, "Don't tell him I said that. This message is set to only play if I failed to reset its timer and if certain other conditions are met. If you're seeing this, Lois, then you're here with an unidentified Kryptonian who shares my DNA, and the Fortress's sensors indicate you are not under duress. Which means there's only one person this can be."

The hologram flickered and reoriented to face Rei, and she couldn't help but feel as though it were looking her in the eyes, judging her, regardless of how preposterous that was.

"Hello, Kara. My name is Kal-El, and I am your cousin. Welcome to Earth."

"Rei," Lois said, "is that-?"

She shook her head. "I am not Kara."

"As you can see," the hologram continued, ignoring the interplay and dispelling the brief illusion that it was more than a recording, "things didn't quite turn out like our fathers planned, and I'm not exactly the baby you were sent here to raise. I know it must be hard, losing Krypton. To me, it was nothing more than recordings in crystals, memories of a world I never knew, but you grew up there. It was your home. I can only imagine the loss that you feel, but Earth is my home, and in time, I hope it can be yours too.

"Our fathers chose well in sending us here, Kara. Not because of the powers we gain here, but because of the people of this world. They aren't perfect - far from it - but they try. They stumble, and they fall, yes, but in the end, they are a good people at heart. All they need is the right person to show them the way... and to catch them when they fall. I can't be that person anymore.

"But you can."

* * *

Rei did not understand fashion, and so, she simply followed Lois, allowing the older woman to pick out her new wardrobe for her. To be fair, she had other things on her mind, such as keeping track of time to ensure she would not be missed in Tokyo-3.

And trying to make sense of what Superman's message to his cousin meant to her. Earth _was_ her home... wasn't it?

_But what_ is_ home?_ The question came unbidden to her mind. The obvious answer - the apartment she slept in - didn't seem right, nor did the entry plug of Unit 01 from which she - or rather, Rei I - had been born.

So if it was neither her place of residence nor the place of her birth, where was it?

"Home is where the heart is" was unlikely to be meant literally, as she could not recall an incident of anyone ever describing their chest cavity as home.

As her mind ran through the definitions, she found one that seemed to apply: a place in which one's domestic affections were centered, a place to which one was loyal.

In that sense, Rei supposed what Superman - Kal-El - assumed about Kara applied equally to her. She had no home.

She shivered. For some reason, that thought made her feel very much alone.

"Mrs. Lane?"

"She speaks!" Lois exclaimed in mock surprise. "I was starting to worry about you, kiddo."

"How do you think I would look in blue?"


	4. Issue 4

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_New Daughter of Krypton #4_

"Oof!"

The impact with the floor violently expelled the air from Shinji's lungs.

"Get up," came the merciless order.

The fourteen year old boy levered himself to his feet and turned to face his instructor, swaying a little as he dropped into a feeble attempt at the combat stance she had shown him.

Diana's face softened. This was so much to put on such a young man's shoulders. "Better," she said. "Remember, physical conditioning is secondary - your Eva handles that part for you - but knowing how to fight and how to fall can mean the difference between life and death for all of us, and pain tolerance is mental, not physical."

She shot a brief glance at the other pilot who was observing from the side, then lunged toward him again.

_Gotta give him credit,_ Diana thought. _He doesn't give up easily._

* * *

The LexPress cargo plane flying over Tokyo-3 was loaded nearly to capacity. Filling the cargo hold were several sections of a massive cylinder, covered in a protective tarp. John was a ballistics engineer, and while figuring out the ballistic characteristics of a stream of antimatter might seem a bit exotic, many of the same principles still applied.

The computer simulations were promising, but until this new magnetic containment barrel was installed - and a suitable power source designed - they would have no practical way to test it, so John kept plugging away, redoing the calculations and triple-checking his equations. Just in case.

Something exploded.

* * *

Down in the city streets, attention was drawn to the skies like never before. Three members of humanity's best line of defense against the Angels took notice.

"Hey, look!" Maya called, pointing. "Up in the sky!"

"What is that?" Aoba mused, squinting as he shaded his eyes, trying to get a better look at the tiny shadow his colleague was pointing at. "Is it a bird?"

"No," Dr. Akagi said, eyes widening, "it's a plane! And it's headed straight for us! Run!"

The massive transport aircraft drifted inexorably closer to the ground, still far faster than would be even remotely survivable, despite the valiant efforts of its pilot and copilot. It was a testament to their skills that, despite the smoke billowing from two of its four engines, the transport avoided colliding with the skyscrapers, instead barrelling down over one of this particular district's grid-pattern streets.

A sonic boom shattered windows as a blue and red blur shot down the street, about twenty feet off the ground before angling up to intercept the stricken aircraft. The older residents who witnessed this recognized it. Though it was a sight far more familiar to Metropolis, the fact remained that Superman recognized no borders when he was needed.

Well, except the one around Gotham.

CRUNCH! Squeal!

Aida Kensuke stared. Without giving it conscious thought, he raised his camera and started filming. He adjusted the zoom, focusing in on the face of the blue and red clad figure impossibly holding the airplane up by its nose, the metal crumpling in her grip to give her suitable handholds. Her black, shoulder-length hair and a golden visor over her eyes obscured her features, but her costume left little to the imagination. Skintight and blue, with a yellow belt and red boots, cape, and briefs.

And, of course, the unmistakeable shield on her chest.

Supergirl - as Kensuke had already mentally labeled her - set the airplane down on the street with surprising gentleness, then a quick blur later, wrenched open the side hatch.

* * *

John was a dead man. He realized this once the plane started going down. He could have tried to bail out, looked for a parachute, something, but he had more dignity than that.

So it came as a great surprise when he woke up, slung over the shoulder of a dainty girl who couldn't be more than half his size at best. She lowered him to the street.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

John took a moment to take stock, patting himself down. It wasn't uncommon for traumatic injuries to fail to register through the adrenaline rush of an emergency situation, and he knew it.

"I'm okay," he answered finally. Noting her costume, he said, "Supergirl, huh? Thank you. You saved my life."

She hesitated, then said, "Then make it one worth saving." She turned and leaped into the air.

"You can count on it," promised Dr. John Henry Irons.

* * *

The meeting convened deep beneath Tokyo-2, in a soundproofed room lined with lead within a Faraday cage. This was the only place they could speak freely.

In truth, it was only one of many, _many_ such meetings being held under equally paranoid security measures to discuss recent events.

"Gentlemen," Chief of Staff Yamato Kaminari of the Japanese Strategic Self Defense Force began, her voice deceptively calm, "it appears we have a new Kryptonian in play."

There were nods of acknowledgement all around. It was a simple statement of fact, after all. The presence of a Kryptonian on Japanese soil, with no hint of her existence prior, was just a touch disquieting. This was a meeting at the highest levels of the JSSDF, the other branches of the JSDF having long since been demoted to supporting the JSSDF.

"Now," she continued, "I'm given to understand that she is _not_ the result of one of our projects. Correct, Takeda?"

"Yes, ma'am," General Takeda confirmed. "Amateur footage suggests Asian - even Japanese - facial structure, but our... projects remain unsuccessful, with all subjects accounted for."

"Which means," she said, "either Krypton has another survivor who happens to look Japanese - I don't think I need to elaborate on how preposterous that idea is - or someone else out there was more successful."

"I see only two real candidates." All eyes turned to the man seated at the far end of the table from General Yamato.

He might have been fairly nondescript - a bit broader of shoulder than most other Japanese men, perhaps - were it not for his most distinguishing feature, the handlebar mustache he insisted on wearing. Both hair and mustache had started going to grey, leaving him with a salt and pepper look.

"Care to enlighten us, Mishima?" Yamato asked, steel in her voice turning the question into an order.

"It's either Nerv or the UN," General Mishima Hizen answered. "Few others would have the resources, and none of them would use Japanese genetic samples."

"You have a plan*," Yamato said. It wasn't a question.

Mishima nodded.

(*A/N: Find out more in _Batgirl Beyond #1_!)

* * *

Tokyo-3 First Municipal Middle School did not have a student newspaper. Until now.

Kensuke was on a mission. He had already convinced - "blackmail" was such a dirty word - the last three members of the A/V Club into disbanding and donating their equipment to the new Journalism Club. It was amazing the silly things middle schoolers wanted to keep secret. Getting the three to stay on with said new Journalism Club was a simple matter. The A/V Club had already been failing anyway, and this let them stay with their beloved equipment.

It was perfect.

Now that the world had Supergirl picking up the torch left from Superman's death, it was only natural that there be someone to carry the other torch and report on her actions locally.

_Hmm,_ he thought. _"The Torch." That has a nice ring to it._

* * *

"Let me tell you about superheroes!" the teacher declared. "The first superhero appeared in nineteen eighty-six. Can anyone tell me who it was?"

Kensuke's hand shot up.

"Aida!"

"Superman!"

"Precisely!" the teacher said, beaming. "Superman was the first superhero, much like Supergirl today would be the first to herald the current age."

Shinji was still new to Tokyo-3, so he couldn't be certain, but this seemed rather out of character for their history teacher, who, until Supergirl's rather spectacular appearance, had preferred to drone on endlessly about Second Impact.

He certainly had never been this enthusiastic before.

Shinji's gaze drifted to the enigmatic Ayanami. To most, the other Eva pilot seemed utterly disinterested in the lecture, but he had a feeling she was paying more attention than usual.

He still wasn't sure how to act around her. She was so quiet, it was hard to get a read on her. She barely even reacted when the synch tests were completed, and Shinji had officially replaced her as primary pilot of Unit 01 due to his higher synch ratio.

With his thoughts drifting back toward Nerv, he wondered how the massive paramilitary organization he now worked for was reacting to this.

* * *

The holographic conference chamber was dark, save for twelve ominous monoliths and Ikari Gendo.

"This was not in the scenario," Seele 05 said.

"The Dead Sea scrolls did not account for extraterrestriel influence," Seele 10 pointed out. "Such influence remains a variable we cannot fully predict."

Seele 02 spoke up. "Ikari, do you know anything about this 'Supergirl'?"

"No," the Nerv commander answered honestly, "but I do not believe her presence is likely to affect the scenario."

"I wouldn't be overly concerned," Seele 08 interjected. "Terminal Dogma was built to counter all known superpowers. Even a Kryptonian would be hard pressed to learn its secrets without being discovered."

* * *

Hakone was a city built on military industry. The land was lacking in any valuable resource - not even hot springs to draw in tourists - and remained largely untouched until the Second Sino-Japanese War, when the Army Ministry of Japan saw potential in the defensible terrain. Initially built as a military industrial complex, Hakone prospered until the end of World War II. With the JSDF limited by the new constitution, Hakone's military industrial complex was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Despite numerous attempts to revitalize the area, reapplying it to civilian use, none of them stuck until Nerv came in and built Tokyo-3 practically on top of it.

But even Nerv wasn't able to stamp out the crime that infested Hakone, and though the towering spires of Tokyo-3 presented the image of a gleaming city of tomorrow to rival Metropolis, Old Hakone remained a den of iniquity more akin to Gotham.

And Arisa had made the mistake of trying to take a shortcut on her way home through the bad part of town.

So, she ran. She was just an intern. She didn't know how to pace herself, nor did she know her way around this part of town, and soon, she found herself gasping for breath, trapped in a dead end alley.

The three men sauntered up to her.

"Aw, come on, girly," the leader said, "it's a matter of courtesy. You cross Intergang turf, you gotta pay the toll. Ain't that right, boys?" His companions chuckled sinisterly.

"HELP!" she screamed.

The man on the left snorted. "Come on, who do you think's gonna hear you? Intergang owns this city."

"Supergirl can hear me," Arisa retorted defiantly.

The leader pulled out a switchblade and flicked it open. "With what goes on in this town, she's gotta be a busy, busy girl. You think she's gonna have time for little old you?"

"Ahem."

"Huh?" They turned around and paled.

Arms folded, cape billowing around her, Supergirl floating there, about half a meter off the ground.

"Your calculations on the likelihood of superhuman intervention are somewhat... inaccurate."

* * *

Author's Postscript:

Be advised, the history of Hakone described here is not intended to be accurate to reality. It is how its history occurred in this 'ficverse, which is necessarily different due to the presence of the Black Moon (of Evangelion canon) limiting the volcanic activity in the region that was such a major influence on its real life development.


	5. Issue 5

**Superwomen of Eva: Legacies**  
_New Daughter of Krypton #5_

The so-called "warehouse district" of Tokyo-3 was part of Old Hakone. Originally built around a dedicated military rail terminal, the warehouse district served as a major stockpile and transfer point for munitions during WWII. For the past few decades, however, it had slowly fallen into disuse along with Hakone itself. It enjoyed a brief surge of activity as the rail line was temporarily reactivated to handle the excess transportation of building materials and other equipment into the city during the construction of Tokyo-3, but other, more economical routes into more prosperous sections of Tokyo-3 handled what intercity freight remained after the brief boom, and the rail line fell silent again.

Well, mostly silent.

The trains that ran along that rail line were small, and they were few and far between, moving only under the cover of night as they transported illicit materials into and out of the city.

"Come on, people!" Jiro bellowed. "Let's get this train loaded up!"

The cargo tonight consisted of a large shipment of Heckler &amp; Koch MP5A3 submachine guns, enough ammunition to fight a small war, and a few... "special" items.

Once upon a time, Japan had been nearly free of illegal firearms. This could be attributed to two things: first, that the laws restricting weapon ownership had been in effect since before the proverbial firearm genie could be let out of the proverbial bottle, and second, because of the strength of the Yakuza, who, though well armed criminals themselves, held themselves to certain standards.

That time was over. Now, Intergang controlled Tokyo-3 and was making serious in-roads into other major cities as well. Add in the chaos and uncertainty brought on in the wake of the Impact Wars, and Intergang was cheerfully meeting the demand.

About half the cargo was loaded when part of one wall exploded. Everyone froze, and silence reigned for a long moment as the dust settled to reveal...

"Supergirl!"

"Get her!"

The reactions were natural, instinctive to members of any criminal organization that ruled their home city.

They opened fire.

Jiro, though, knew better and turned back to the cargo. While the gunfire might slow her down... it probably wouldn't.

Supergirl calmly waded through the gunfire. It was odd, she decided, having a storm of bullets wash across her like water. A punch - more of a tap, really - here, a joint-lock and twist there, a quick throw there, and resistance withered.

BOOM!

She blinked at the stars.

_How did I end up outside?_

She shook her head groggily and picked herself up, noting the man with the large, smoking weapon.

Jiro grinned. It worked!

A product of LexCorp, the BG-80 - known on the street as the "Toastmaster" - was an anti-armor infantry weapon developed during the Impact Wars. It was a large caliber hip cannon that fired rocket-assisted high-velocity rounds. His first shot had sent Supergirl flying through the brick wall of the rail terminal.

"That's right, Supergirl!" he called as he stepped outside. "Get a big enough gun, and even you can't shrug it..."

Crunch!

"...off?" he squeaked, suddenly finding himself face to face the Kryptonian, the Toastmaster's barrel crushed in her hand.

_This is going to hurt._

* * *

"If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere," so the saying went. Where "there" is varied from time to time: A century ago, it had been Gotham City, then it moved to New York, then Metropolis, creeping up the east coast of the United States throughout the twentieth century, but in the post-Impact world, "there" was Tokyo-3.

This was what brought Dr. Walter Shreeve here, to the City of the Future, Tokyo-3.

Shreeve Sound Laboratories was a rather cramped but well-equipped facility, and it was his pride and joy. He'd made a massive gamble, and he'd had to get the money from somewhere, but he was sure it was about to pay off.

Ibuki Maya found it all fascinating. A "sound masker," which could nullify sound in an area, generating a region of complete silence. Sonic blasters capable of blasting apart ferrocrete. Sonic amplifiers that could isolate particular sounds and amplify them.

For her part, however, Dr. Akagi Ritsuko was considerably less impressed. While on a purely technical basis, the devices he was demonstrating were brilliant...

She shook her head. "All very impressive, Doctor Shreeve," she allowed, "but ultimately useless to Nerv. I'm afraid I cannot justify the budgetary expense to acquire your sonic technology."

Walter stared.

"But... but I'll be ruined! I put _everything_ into this!"

"Then perhaps you should have considered who you were selling to," Ritsuko answered coldly. "I work for Nerv, first line of defense against the Angels. Your stealth technology would be irrelevant in the battles we fight, and unless your sonic weapons can be scaled up and penetrate an AT field, they're of no use to us."

Maya shot Walter an apologetic look and hurried on after her superior. "Doctor Akagi, was that really necessary? Surely, we can find some use for-"

"We're not running a charity, Maya," Ritsuko pointed out. "The fate of humanity rests on Nerv, and we can't afford to waste our resources. Even using those sonic blasters of his for demolitions work would be exorbitantly expensive compared to conventional explosives."

* * *

"I just feel sorry for him," Maya muttered with a sigh. She was currently in one of Nerv's break rooms, nursing her coffee.

"For who?"

She blinked and looked up. "Oh, sorry, Doctor Suzuki. I was just..." she floundered.

Dr. Suzuki Hiei of Nerv's Hazardous Materials Division shook his head. "Don't worry about it, Maya. Who is it you're feeling sorry for today?"

Maya winced. So she was a little idealistic. Was that so wrong? "Doctor Shreeve," she answered. "Doctor Akagi put the nail in the coffin today on whatever hopes he had for contracting to Nerv."

Dr. Suzuki frowned for a moment, placing the name. "The sonics guy?"

Maya nodded. "Yeah. It really sounds like he bet everything on getting a Nerv contract."

"I see."

* * *

Walter didn't think of himself as a brave man. Which was why he was already packing when certain loan collectors arrived.

"Hello, Doctor."

He whirled. "M-Mister Dotan! I, ah, wasn't expecting you."

"I'm sure you weren't," Dotan Hideki said. "As I recall, you owe my organization a considerable amount of money, and it seems you've run into some financial difficulties."

"I... I..."

"Relax, Doctor Shreeve," Hideki said. "We've heard what you've been working on here, and we're quite impressed. I'm here to make you an offer."

* * *

Tokyo-3, fortress city of the future, presented some unique challenges for its public servants. Every city had to concern itself with the usual - crime, natural disaster, etc. - but Tokyo-3 was a little bit different.

Its firefighting force had to be prepared to handle a variety of military grade ordnance, up to and including explosive ordnance disposal. Tokyo-3's emergency medical services boasted some of the best trauma care in the world. And the police...

Well...

Beneath the veneer, Tokyo-3 was a city built on secrets, science, and soldiers. It needed a police force with discretion, one that could work around the cutting edge in technology and the military forces stationed nearby.

But most of all, it needed a police force that could adapt when things got... weird.

Commissioner Margaret Sawyer wondered once again why the hell she'd taken this job.

The crime scene was one of the "pocket labs" that were unique to Tokyo-3, one Shreeve Sound Laboratories. The whole building had been tossed and stripped bare: no documents, only the heaviest and immobile equipment, and no sign of Dr. Shreeve anywhere.

Long experience told her that, when scientists went missing, trouble was sure to follow.

* * *

Rei wasn't sure what to make of this gathering. Captain Katsuragi had stated it was a belated house warming party for Pilot Ikari.

She idly wondered how sincere the Tactical Operations Director's motives were, given how quickly she dove into her supply of beer. When she asked Shinji about it, she was told that the Captain was actually holding back. She wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Apart from that question, though, she hadn't talked with anyone at all. It was an... unpleasant feeling. Ever since she started interacting with Mrs. Lane, she had discovered that talking to other people could be an enjoyable experience. In a place with so many people, she felt that not talking to them was leaving something out.

So she stood, with her fellow school children, but still apart from them, listening to what they were saying and waiting for the chance to jump into the conversation. That was how she understood it was supposed to be done, anyway.

"I was there when Supergirl made her debut," Kensuke bragged.

"Really?" That was Kirishima Mana, a new transfer student and friend of Pilot Ikari.

"Yep." He nodded vigorously. "Who do you think took those photos in _The Torch_?"

"What can you tell me about her?" Mana asked. "I mean, who _is_ she, really?"

"My guess is that Superman found love, and she's his daughter," Class Representative Horaki said dreamily.

"Love? With who? A human? What are the chances?" Toji asked rehtorically.

_Better then you think,_ Rei thought, choosing to hold her tongue on that.

"Maybe she's a clone," Shinji suggested.

There it was, a subject Rei could contribute to.

"That is highly unlikely," she interjected.

"Why?" Hikari asked.

"Kryptonian DNA has adverse reactions to cloning. The only known Kryptonian clone to survive was Bizarro, and he suffered many problems not long after becoming active."

Mana gave her a wide-eyed look. "Like what?"

"The symptoms he experienced included decreased mental faculties due to cancerous formations in the brain cavity, bone deformation resulting in a forced posture that would be extremely painful for humans, and necrosis of the flesh that caused large sections of skin falling off to reveal unnatural pigmintation. Those were the most obvious symptoms, at least, and I am unaware of any recent developments in bioengineering to suggest these problems have been overcome. All other attempts at cloning Superman after Second Impact I am aware of were... less successful."

As Rei finished, she looked around the group to see that almost all of them - Mana was the notable exception - had queasy expressions on their faces. She took this as an indication that she had made some sort of social misstep and she went back to being the wallflower; talking seemed a lot less fun than it did before.

The party continued with Rei hanging back, watching everyone else go about their business. That business was, at the moment, watching the Operations Director dance like a Cossack to throbbing techno tunes. Unexpectedly, Miss Kirishima broke away and approached her.

"Hey, I think we got off on the wrong foot," Mana said, elevating her voice so Rei could hear her over the music, but still low enough to keep from being overheard by the others present.

For her part, Rei was slightly perpexed by the turn of phrase, but she figured that she got the general gist from the tone and context, guessing that she was refering to when she had attempted to talk to her before class a few days ago. "Okay."

Mana then went on to elaborate. "It's just that I was new in town, and thought you would make a good friend."

Now, her speech patterns were getting Rei on edge. "'Thought'?"

Mana continued, seemingly obilivious to the effect her words were having. "Yeah, you just seemed so lonely that I felt I had to at least try."

Rei's eyes narrowed. She knew where this conversation was going. "Well," she began with an exasperated tone. "I'm glad you stopped pitying me and no longer think I'd make a good friend, because I am not lonely and don't require you 'trying.'"

Mana seemed shocked by those turn of events. "Hey, wait a moment..."

"That will be all, Miss Kirishima," Rei said, a note of finality in her voice.

Mana seemed to compose herself. "Yes, ma'am," she replied sarcastically.

Rei went back to the party and tried to get Shinji's attention. "I will be leaving now," she told him.

"Oh, okay. Have a safe walk home," Shinji replied distractedly... possibly by the horrific attempt at "dancing" Toji was engaged in.

She left the appartment and began walking home, reflecting that the night had been a disaster. She didn't get to talk to anyone, and she didn't even get dinner.

All of a sudden, her super hearing picked up the sound of the police scanner in a nearby unattended crusier reporting a crime in progress down by the docks in New Yokosuka.

_Well,_ she thought as she bolted for home and her costume, a small grin threatening to split her face, _at least something good will come of this._

* * *

A/N: From now on, Cody MacArthur Fett (FFN user ID 1427214) will be taking over as primary writer of this 'fic.

From Cody: "Rei's awkwardness at the party is based in part off my own experiences. I can't remember a time when I've actually been anything approaching comfortable in a party setting, and while on some level that is upsetting, it also gives great inspiration for characters like Rei. Besides, it's a trope."


	6. Issue 6

Written by Cody MacArthur Fett

Edited by Cyclone and Bob Regent

* * *

"Are you enjoying your food?" Gendo asked, stabbing a fork into his steak.

"I am. Thank you for taking me out to lunch," Rei replied before daintily digging into her tofu platter.

"You're welcome," Gendo answered simply. He was raising the piece of steak to his mouth when he suddenly had a question pop into his head. "Rei, I don't believe I've ever seen you order such dishes."

"Hmm?" Rei hummed, her cheeks full of tofu and her eyes wide. She made sure to chew and swallow before replying. "I just thought that I should try something different. I have been eating the same things for years; it's time for a change."

The blue-haired girl punctuated this statement by stabbing yet another block of tofu with her fork.

Gendo nodded slowly and went back to eating. The rest of dinner passed without incident, and before long, it was time for dessert. Gendo was about to decline, but to his surprise, Rei accepted the offer, something she had never done before. To his even greater surprise, the blue-haired girl ordered the Quintuple Chocolate Sundae Surprise. To his mounting horror, the normally delicate First Child began to devour the chocolate-frosted chocolate monstrosity with chocolate sprinkles, chocolate icing, and a gooey chocolate center with abandon.

From Rei's perspective, it looked like the Commander was acting more and more irrational, with sweaty palms and a heartbeat that betrayed his nervousness. He was clearly disquieted, but what could be the cause of it? Suddenly, Rei realized that her mannerisms had put him off through the entire lunch. He just couldn't handle the changes in personality.

She wasn't going to stop eating her ice cream, of course; denying oneself that much chocolate was just crazy, in her opinion. However, if he reacted in a panicked manner to simple changes in her diet, how would he react to the fact that she was Supergirl? She suddenly realized the wisdom of Dr. Akagi's orders; there was simply no way the Commander would be able to work to his fullest potential if he was worried like that.

Still, several other factors floated into her mind, and with sadness, she realized that it would best to keep her superhero identity under wraps. She would have to live a double life, never letting those close to her find out her secret. If they ever did find out, the consequences would be dire.

Now, Rei was depressed, and if there was any solution to depression that she had learned from the movie she watched with Ms. Lane... it was ice cream. The thought that she might have been inducing that feeling herself as an excuse to eat chocolate guilt free entered her mind briefly and was dismissed. After all, Rei reasoned, one did not need an excuse to eat chocolate.

* * *

After lunch, Rei prepared to settle into a quiet Sunday patrolling, beating up bad guys, and immersing her mind in the pure joy that was flight. Those plans were shattered by an ear-piercing screech that split the afternoon sky. The Girl of Steel's head whipped to the side, using her x-ray vision to peer through layers upon layers of steel and silicon to find the source of the disturbance.

She found it in a group of people standing in front of a storefront, with dust billowing out of the front. Three of the men were armed with submachine guns, while the fourth was wearing a large white and black suit. Three mooks and a supervillain, she realized.

With as much rapidity as she could without breaking the sound barrier, Rei flew towards the miscreants. With great precision, the Girl of Tomorrow flew up behind them and struck a heroic pose.

"Surrender, villains!" Rei proclaimed. _According to the historical records that should be the proper way to announce my presence to these criminals._

All four of the men turned towards her as one, and one of the thugs wielding a submachine gun pointed at her. "It's Supergirl! Blast her!"

They raised their guns to their shoulders and opened fire. The 9mm rounds would, of course, do absolutely nothing to her, but they could miss or deflect off her body to hit a civilian, and she couldn't allow that. So instead, she rushed toward one of them and pushed the paddle magazine release just in front of the trigger before grabbing the ejected magazine. She then repeated the process two more times before stowing them in a safe place that the police would be notified about.

All told, the procedure took 2.3 seconds, and when she was done, Rei began to work over the mooks. Two punches, and two mooks hit the ground unconscious. She was just about to rush in and hit the third when the supervillain finally reacted.

For a split second, she felt a slight caress against her hair, so slight that even she was unable to react in time as a disorienting sense of vertigo hit her. A moment later, the caress became a thunderous impact, as a massive wave of pressure slammed into her head, throwing the invincible Kryptonian to the side.

"What?!" Supergirl grunted, trying to stand just in time to be hit with another wave, which threw her even harder to the ground, and this one... this one didn't stop. Supergirl tried vainly to cover her head from the onslaught, the vibrations rattling her entire body.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" the villain laughed maniacally as he slowly walked towards her, his hands held out, the waves emanating from them, forcing Supergirl to roll up into a ball, trying to get away from the criminal's power. "You might be able to resist bullets and bombs, Supergirl, but you'll fall to the ground against the awesome sonic might of . . . The Shriek!"

Rei clutched her head and tried to focus, but it was so hard with all that blasted ringing! It was debilitatingly loud, and her superhuman hearing was making everything worse. She couldn't think, she couldn't stand, she couldn't act. . . . She needed to act.

Her palm slammed into the ground, creating a shockwave and knocking the supervillain off his feet. He had finally gotten a reprieve, but her body was still racked with pain.

"Kenta! The fuzz are closing in!" the last mook standing yelled at the supervillain as he got back to his feet.

"Just a moment, old chum! I think she's almost done for," - a police car rounded the corner a mile away at just that moment - "but perhaps discretion is the better part of valor."

The Shriek and the last remaining mook hopped into the back of a waiting truck, and the white-suited supervillain turned to give one last proclamation. "So long, Supergirl! Don't worry, I'll be sure to kill you next time!"

As the truck began speeding away Rei raised her hand to her upper lip to feel something strange and realized something important. "I'm bleeding," she said absentmindedly. "I never bleed."

She tried to get up and immediately fell down.

"Flight. I have to get to Dr. Hikawa," Supergirl murmured before lifting off the ground and flying into the afternoon sun. By the time the police finally got there, she was gone.

* * *

Dr. Hikawa Takao hummed an old army tune he had heard while on leave in Britain as he worked. He had just sent the last of the infirmary's patients that had been in intensive care home, and for once in his career, his beds were empty. He should have known that it wouldn't last long.

The door slammed open, and in stumbled the First Child. She was bleeding from her nose and ears, and her body was covered in bruises. Without hesitation, the Nerv CMO rushed over to grab her.

"Easy there, Miss Ayanami. I got you," Takao said as he helped the girl to one of empty beds near his office. After laying her down, he pulled the privacy curtain and asked her what happened.

"A supervillain named The Shriek. Sonic attack," Rei moaned. "Couldn't move. Agh! It hurts!"

"Easy there, pilot. I'll have you fixed up and call the commander down," Takao said as he moved towards the intercomm.

"No!" Rei gasped. "He can't know about this. I'm under orders not to let him know."

"I'm not," Takao pointed out. Despite saying that, though, he switched to getting his instruments collected.

"Please, Dr. Hikawa. If he finds out about this, he'll break, and if that happens, we'll all be in trouble," Rei reasoned.

"If he breaks? What if _you_ break?" Takao asked pointedly, turning back to face her. "You're irreplaceable, Ayanami."

"You're wrong. If I die, I can be replaced," Rei said evenly.

"Like hell you can," Takao said hotly. "Even if somehow they have a whole lab full of clones just waiting to take your place, and on some level I wouldn't be surprised if they did, the you that exists right now is unique and precious. You're more than flesh and memory, Ayanami, and I'm not going to let you keep people in the dark while you're in danger."

Rei stared at him through a completely red eye, and then relented. "Lois Lane."

"The reporter?" Takao asked in a confused tone.

"Yes," Rei nodded. "She is the only other one who knows what I am. She should be informed about this too. She can also offer insights into Kryptonian physiology."

Takao was, to say the least, shocked and stunned. He knew the moment that Rei had revealed her powers to him that he was in over his head, but this? He was so far down the rabbit hole that he was just a few meters from visiting some old friends in the Falklands.

"Doctor, I'm still bleeding," Rei pointed out.

"Right! Sorry," Takao apologized as he went back to work. "I just got distracted by the Earth-shattering revelation."

* * *

A day later later, Rei was cutting through the upper atmosphere above the continental United States at hypersonic speeds, her injuries almost completely healed. Dr. Hikawa said that her recovery time was nothing short of remarkable, but she disagreed. Any time at all spent in the infirmary was time wasted that should have been spent tracking down this new supervillain.

Rei wasn't a fool, though. She knew that she had been outmatched, and that her brain had been battered around inside her skull like it was a squishy ping pong ball. She was also humble enough to admit that she needed help and advice. Dr. Hikawa had provided the former, and now, she sought the latter from the only person in the world who could give it.

And as she entered the airspace over nighttime Metropolis, her extraordinarily high definition vision confirmed that that same person was already waiting for her. She did not look pleased.

The Girl of Steel touched down on the floor of the patio and prepared her explanation. She wasn't prepared to be enveloped in a hug. She wasn't prepared, but it was still nice.

"Dr. Hikawa told me what happened," Lois said, her voice hitching on a heavy inhale and her hug tightening slightly. "You really had me worried there, kiddo."

Rei wasn't quite sure to do in this situation, but she could extrapolate based on available inputs. So she encircled her arms around Ms. Lane and hugged back, gently. It felt . . . nice.

"Come on, kiddo. Let's go inside," Lois said as she broke off the hug. Rei didn't admit it, but she missed it already.

* * *

A few minutes later, Rei was was drinking a glass of chocolate milk while Lois poured herself a orange juice. Her visor lay to her right and her wig lay to her left. The home's owner soon sat across from her.

"So what happened out there?" Lois asked gently.

"A group of four individuals were attacking a storefront. Three were armed with submachine guns, the fourth was wearing some sort of sonic amplification suit. Thinking that the men with the guns were more of a threat, I disarmed them and attempted to knock them unconscious first. In the processing of disabling the third assailant after disarming him, I was struck with a sonic attack that stunned me and left me unable to strike back. According to Dr. Hikawa, the attack resulted in multiple counts of internal bleeding, a concussion, and many bruises, all of which was healed thanks to my own regenerative abilities and the care provided by Dr. Hikawa. The remaining assailant and the supervillain, codenamed The Shriek, escaped upon seeing the possibility of police intervention," Rei reported honestly, then took a sip of chocolate milk.

Lois blinked three times, then replied, "Well, I think you did a good job taking down the flunkies with the guns, but you should have focused on The Shriek after disarming them. Remember, bullets can't hurt you unless they're magic or kryptonite, but it's rare that a supervillain will attack you if they can't do some serious damage. I doubt he could have touched you if you were paying attention."

Rei nodded. She had to admit that Lois was right. She had gotten too focused on the first objective and had missed the supervillain and his attack.

"Also, you didn't mention this, but was there anything unusual about the store they were attacking?" Lois asked curiously.

"No," Rei said. "It appeared to be a simple store. Nothing special about it."

Lois nodded. "It could be that there's more to it, but the most likely scenario is that it was a trap."

"A trap?" Rei asked, somewhat confused.

"Yes, it was bound to happen eventually. You've been busting up Intergang's operations, and they're tired of it. So now they're going after you, without waiting for you to come to them," Lois explained.

"What should I do then?" Rei asked.

"Set a trap for the trappers," Lois replied with a grin.

Rei raised a single eyebrow at this, and Lois took it as a cue to elaborate.

"Simple, isn't it? They come to you, looking to catch you off guard, but when they arrive, you pounce instead. Alternatively, you could find out where they're hiding and just break the door down. Either way, I suggest you collaborate with your local police department. Have you done that, yet?" Lois asked.

"No," Rei said simply.

"Well, there's no better time like the present. Tell you what, the commissioner of the T3PD is an old friend of mine, and unless her personality's pulled a one-eighty in the last few months, she's can definitely be trusted," Lois said, before getting slightly more worried. "Just, you know, as long as you keep it to crime fighting and don't give away your secret identity."

"Of course," Rei replied matter-of-factly.

* * *

Hours later, Rei was waking up in Tokyo-3 and getting ready for school. She was 'burning the candle at both ends,' as Ms. Lane was fond of saying, but she found that she was suffering little in the way of side-effects from the lack of sleep. She wasn't a fool though; she knew that she would eventually start suffering mental side effects from the lack of sleep, so she had to rest eventually. That would be either that night or the next, for the criminal scum that blighted her city and gave her a massive pounding headache would soon be behind bars.

School passed without incident, and soon after it was out, Rei was flying through the sky towards the headquarters of the Tokyo-3 Police Department. She activated her X-Ray vision and, to her great surprise, found the commissioner on her way to the roof of the building with a lunchbox in her hand. That was . . . convenient, but the black wig-wearing girl wasn't about to 'look a gift horse in the mouth' . . . unless it was yet another trap, of course.

When she was seconds away from touching down, the commissioner opened the door to the roof and looked up to see her. When Rei did finally set down, she was greeted by an outstretched hand, a classic Western greeting. She took it, and gently shook.

"I was wondering when you'd finally show your face around here," Commissioner Margaret 'Maggie' Sawyer said in English as she ended the handshake. "And here I thought I would have a nice quiet lunch on the roof. Without the second-hand smoke tempting me back."

She shook her head before continuing.

"This country is not a good place for smokers trying to get clean. So, I'm guessing you're here about The Shriek?" the commissioner asked.

Rei nodded. "Yes, have there been any leads to his whereabouts?"

The commissioner paused and looked away before focusing on the peak of the central mountain. "No. Not that I would get anywhere with this police force. Half of them are completely demoralized, and the other half are on the take. The city hired me to take over here, thanks to my previous experiences on the Metropolis PD's Special Crimes Unit, but half the time, I'm fighting the people who are supposed to be under my command . . . but I do know something that will help you right now, Supergirl."

At this, the commissioner finally turned around to look the Girl of Steel dead in the eyes. "They're putting up a new exhibit at the Tokyo-3 Museum of Natural History on prehistoric genetics. You could advertise that you're going to attend. They'll probably show up, and when they do, you can take them down."

Rei thought it over. It was a very sound strategy, but at the same time, it might result in collateral damage. She didn't want civilians to get hurt, and she really wanted to see that exhibit. There had to be another way . . . .

"Commissioner, what about you?" Rei asked thoughtfully. "How will you deal with the corruption?"

The commissioner paused for a moment before responding. "There's maybe a few that I can trust here - four or five - the rest are unreliable or corrupt. I can get them together, start gathering evidence against the corrupt, maybe call in a few contacts to see if they can offer assistance."

"Gather them, arm them, and get them ready to deploy at a moment's notice. They will attack soon, hoping to draw me out, tonight I suspect, in the abandoned warehouse district. When they do, I will require your assistance to arrest them," Rei told her confidently.

Sawyer's eyes widened. "You're planning to draw them out."

"I won't kill them, but I will make them hurt," the Girl of Steel said, her eyes stern.

* * *

"Here she comes again!" an Intergang thug screamed as the blue blur of pain known as Supergirl pulled a hammerhead in the air before looping back around to slam down into one of their parked getaway vehicles with the force of a bomb.

The air of the warehouse was thick with gunfire, smoke, flame, and the acrid scents of burning vehicles. To Takata Kinumi, it was Hell. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, and he was so scared, he couldn't move from the stack of cinder blocks he was hiding behind. He didn't sign up for this! This wasn't how it was supposed to be! It was happening again!

"Kinumi, help!" a voice called out to him.

He turned his head to find one of his friends, Stroka, crawling towards him. Blood was pooling out onto the pavement from his legs. They were smashed, broken, and so destroyed that it was doubtful he would ever walk again. He . . . he had to help.

Without looking, he ran out and grabbed a hold of Stroka's shirt collar, dragging him back to where Kinumi had been hiding. His friend screamed in pain, but he kept going. He had to keep going.

They reached the back of the pile, and Kinumi stopped to catch his breath. "Don't worry, man. We'll get out of this. We'll get out of this," he gasped. His friend just moaned and cried in response.

He was still trying to catch his breath a few seconds later when a van pulled onto the scene. Its back doors swung open, and out stepped The Shriek and his team. The first supervillain of a new age, and the one that made Supergirl bleed. At least, that's what they said, Kinumi didn't believe it.

"Come on out, Supergirl! Come on out and play!" The Shriek screamed.

He got his wish. The blue terror streaked from the sky and tore the guns from the hands of his team, regardless of how tightly they were holding them. The Shriek let out a sonic blast that brought Supergirl down, but she got back up and bolted to the side, taking the guns from more people as she flew.

The Shriek gave chase, stepping over the broken bodies of the Intergang members. This continued for at least thirty seconds, and then The Shriek let loose another continuous blast of sound. Supergirl went down again - this time, it seemed for good - under the continuous waves of sound.

"Did you really think you could come in here alone and mess up our operation, little girl?!" The Shriek screamed. "We're Intergang! We rule this city!"

Three of the doors blew down, and a sextet of flash-bang grenades were thrown into the warehouse. They exploded, and Kinumi screamed in pain as his world turned into white noise. When he finally came to, there were six police officers in the room with assault rifles drawn, and The Shriek was down on the ground with his helmet off, revealing Kenta.

Kinumi turned on the safety on his IJ71H Makarov PMM pistol, ejected the magazine, racked the slide to eject the round already in the chamber, and slide everything to the side before throwing his hands into the air.

"I surrender!"

* * *

Walter Shreeve sat in a chair in a dingy apartment in New Yokosuka. It was, in fact, his first home outside of the US, and he had managed to hold onto it through the years, even when he mostly lived at his lab in Tokyo-3. Now, he stayed in it again, watching the TV as Supergirl and Commissioner Sawyer stood side-by-side while at least thirty members of Intergang were led away in police vans and ambulances.

They were talking about how they taken out The Shriek, a man wearing _his_ sonic suit. They talked about how _easy_ it was, once the element of surprise was removed. How there was _no way_ it could have stood up to them.

The cowards! The fools! Intergang had squandered the opportunity that had been presented to them, and now, because of the actions of a bunch of incompetent bunglers, the good name of his technology was being dragged through the mud. But he wouldn't stand for it!

In a huff, Shreeve got up from his chair and walked towards the wall. He moved aside a panel to reveal a keypad that he quickly activated. When the code had been entered, another part of the wall slid aside to reveal a spare sonic suit.

"Intergang can't show off one simple piece of tech. Fine," he growled. "I'll do it myself."

* * *

Cody's A/N: Rei's an interesting character to write for. As much as she's like me, she's also completely different, and I'm not just talking about the tofu! That said, it's amazing how easy this stuff is coming now considering that the story was stuck half-way through the last chapter for a year and a half. I wonder how long it'll last . . .

* * *

This week has given us two mook horror shows and a bit of character development. Next week will see the return of the Angels and the start of two new stories. So tune in next Sunday to see the marvelous future continue to develop for our true blue heroines.


	7. Issue 7

_New Daughter of Krypton_ #7

Written by Cody Fett

Edited by Bob Regent and Cyclone

Japanese Translation by Shinzakura

* * *

When Rei and Shinji entered the gym the day after the bust, they once again found their DI there before them. Strangely, she was talking with Lt. Ibuki about something, but when Rei made a move to listen in with her sonar-like hearing, they stopped talking, and Maya left the room. The blue-haired pilot was curious to know what was going on, but wasn't in a position to ask.

"OK, you two, sparring time. Rei, you're up first," Diana said calmly with a jerk of her thumb. "Today will just be a little match or five to get a feel on your progress; we'll continue the training tomorrow."

The blue-haired pilot walked over to her side of the sparring mat and took a fighting stance. Diana did the same and soon gave the signal to start. Sixty seconds later, she called an end to it after being floored four times.

Rei gave a slight grin at this. Sure, she had used a little of her super strength, but why wouldn't she? Diana had been planting her into the mat for a while by then, and it just felt good to let loose once in a while, even if just a little bit.

Diana . . . Diana had a strange look on her face though, and just for a moment, Rei wondered if she had let her win.

"Shinji, you're up," Diana said to the male pilot of the team.

Where Rei had easily won against Diana, Shinji fared . . . less than well against the tall woman. He was laying face down on the mat five times before he was let up. When he finally made it back to the sidelines, he was panting and groaning.

Diana's expression was once again inscrutable, and Rei couldn't help but wonder what was going on in her head. Was it cultural differences and the expression perfectly normal? Was she actually a supervillain and planning to destroy them? Was it some sort of DI scheme to destroy them? She didn't know, and it was driving her nuts.

"You two, against each other now," Diana said, interrupting Rei's thoughts.

The First Child got up easily, while the Third struggled to get back up. Rei might not have been that good at reading people, but beating people up? That she knew.

* * *

Rei climbed into the lower ionosphere with a smile on her face. She was happy, and she had reason to be, in her oh so humble opinion. She had stopped her first supervillain, restored confidence to many in the T3PD, struck a serious blow against Intergang, finally stopped the ringing in her head, succeeded at the latest sparring session, and was flying at that moment.

Now, she was going to see Ms. Lane, having been called over by a message relayed through Dr. Hikawa. She wondered if she was going to congratulate her on a job well done. Indeed, it was possible that she would be so delighted that she would go and take her out to eat at a Metropolis restaurant, or a hot dog cart, she really wasn't that picky.

A few minutes later, a quick check over Metropolis confirmed that Lois was waiting for her again, so the Girl of Steel began her rapid descent towards the ground. 5,000ft above the surface, she leveled out and started a more gentle descent towards her goal. Using her super senses, it was easy to plot a way to the apartment that would bypass any surveillance; it was also easy to complete the route and land on the apartment balcony; it was significantly less easy to avoid Ms. Lane twisting her ear.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Rei repeated, wincing at the newfound level of pain.

"Come inside, young lady. We have a lot to talk about," Lois told her sternly before turning around and marching them inside.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Rei continued.

* * *

"What the . . ." Lois began angrily before stopping herself and silently counting to three. "What happened out there?" she continued, pointing to a copy of the _Daily Planet: Japan Edition_ with the headline showing a picture from the raid.

"You can read Japanese?" Rei asked, surprised.

"_Mochiron, watashi wa nihongo o rikai shimasu!_ Stay focused on the issue at hand, which is using excessive force when taking on Intergang," Lois snapped.

"What do you mean?" Rei asked evenly.

Lois picked up the newspaper and began reading off parts of an article. "Broken arms, broken legs, broken backs, pulverized bones, fingers ripped from their sockets and found still gripping rifles several meters away, mutilation, permanent disfigurement, on and on."

Lois put the article down, her eyes burning with such fury that Rei had to look away. "Look at me," she told her, and the superpowered girl did not comply. "Look at me," she repeated, moving the girl's head with her hand and reaching up to take off the red-eyed girl's glasses. "You've never done this before. Why did you do it?"

"They _hurt_ me," Rei said instinctively, finally looking Lois in the eyes.

"Now I know why Clark's room had Romans 12:19 on one of the walls," Lois said off to the side and then turned back to Supergirl. "Rei, you can't do that. You can't . . . Everyone deserves a chance at redemption. Everyone deserves their day in court. Everyone deserves the chance to walk through life without being crippled.

"Clark, Superman, always used the minimum amount of force necessary to bring a criminal in. He did this so that they would be fully capable of making the choice to become an upstanding member of society. He did it because he knew that it would be the right thing to do, and it's something you're going to have to learn too."

Rei stayed quiet for a bit, her eyes cast downward, unsure of how to respond.

"Rei . . . I'm not very good at this," Lois admitted. "Clark always did this stuff better, but he's not here anymore," she said with a sigh at the end. "You were feeling vengeful the other day, I should have seen it, and because of that, you acted out of anger, but do you understand why it is bad?"

Rei . . . wasn't sure how to respond to that. She tried to think of something to respond with, anything to respond with, but all she could think of was what the Sub-Commander had said about Superman. He had said that he was a symbol, that by not saving people he would have tarnished that symbol, and she somehow knew that washing it in the blood of the critically injured would have done the same.

Superman, Clark Kent, wasn't a symbol though, he was a man. He was, from everything that she had learned, an incredibly moral and compassionate man. The young girl wearing the blue and red costume tried to imagine what he would look like, what he would say if he was right in front of her that moment, but all she could picture was his mouth, and it was slack with disappointment.

All of a sudden Miss Lane's arms encircled her, and she was embraced in a hug.

"Rei, do you want to hurt people?" Lois asked.

"No," Rei got out.

"That's all I needed to hear," Lois said softly. "Just don't cripple people again."

* * *

"Hey, mack, just who they hell do you think you are, showing up here again?" the Intergang rep yelled across the warehouse.

"My name is Walter Shreeve. I am here to find out why my technology failed in the recent fight against Supergirl," the man in the white and black suit said evenly.

"Cheese, scientists . . ." the Intergang rep cursed under his breath. "You know, most people skip town after Intergang gives them a clean sheet, but you want to know why your technology failed, Shreeve? You really want to know? It failed because it didn't measure up."

"Impossible,. The technology is infallible; it must have been user error," Shreeve said defensively.

"Infallible?!" the Intergang rep repeated before breaking into laughter. "No technology is infallible! Especially not when dealing with a Kryptonian whose reflexes are faster than most computers. Your technology wasn't fast enough, it wasn't powerful enough, and it certainly wasn't advanced enough to take on Supergirl. It didn't measure up."

"You're wrong," Shreeve repeated.

The rep advanced towards Shreeve and tapped his finger against the suit's chestplate while speaking. "It. Didn't. Measure. Up."

The cold and unfeeling panel on the front of the suit's helmet that looked like a cyclopean eye stared down at the rep.

"You. Are. Wrong."

The Intergang rep shrugged his shoulders and walked away. "Sure, whatever you say, buddy. Not like it matters anyway."

"You're wrong," Shreeve repeated. "I shall prove it."

The Intergang rep spun around on his heels at those words. "Excuse me? You plannin' to go up against a Kryptonian by yourself?"

"No. I shall kill an Angel. Then Nerv will see that they were wrong too. They'll all see," Shreeve said confidently.

The Intergang rep just blinked twice and walked away again. "Alrighty then. Intergang will be with you in spirit. Lord knows we could do without the giant monsters."

With that, Shreeve left the warehouse, and the Intergang rep sighed in relief. He would get to see another day. With Supergirl and this new Bat on the scene, that was the best he could hope for.

* * *

Rei grunted as she was thrown into the mat again. It was the seventh time that day, and it showed no signs of stopping. She had been right the previous day; Diana had been toying with her.

"Get up," the dark-haired giant ordered her.

With little strain, the Kryptonian got off the mat, but still, there was strain.

"What is the problem? You're clearly not with it today, and I want to know why," Diana demanded of her.

Rei looked at her, knowing that she could neither lie nor tell the truth, and decided to spin things as best she could. "I recently engaged in a conversation with a confidant in which they revealed to me that some of my actions might be reckless and immoral, and have been shaken by the experience."

_There_, Rei thought, _that is a correct statement in the broadest sense of the term_.

Diana sighed at this. "Well, I'm going to respect your privacy regarding whatever 'reckless and immoral' activities you engaged in, but I suspect that if what your confidant told you is really bothering you, then you probably already know they're right."

"What should I do then?"

"The answer is simple, if a bit difficult to implement sometimes: stop," Diana replied. "Whatever you're doing that you know is wrong, just stop doing it."

Rei knew she was right, but was still confused. "But what if I engaged in these activities while in the process of doing something that I know to be morally right?"

"Oh, well, that's corruption, and just as bad, so my advice remains the same," Diana said easily.

Rei raised an eyebrow and metaphorically chewed on her instructor's words. "So you're saying that I should commit to the good acts while leaving the troubling?"

"Essentially," Diana said with a shrug. "You also should get your head back in the game. Your form is off, and you're easily flippable."

* * *

_"Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the region. Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the region."_

Rei shifted as she stood on the second floor of the command tower in the central command center of Nerv HQ. It was, she had often reflected, an extremely tall position, and she couldn't help but think that the designers had been wasting money making something that big instead of something that was all level. It certainly would have stopped the late Doctor Akagi from ending her life in such a messy manner.

"All units are to keep their distance and hold fire until otherwise ordered," General Hardcastle ordered from his observatory position just above the main command center but below the commander's desk.

The other two generals that had accompanied him during the first Angel attack were gone, and in their stead was a General Hizen and his aide-de-camp. Rei did not like them. There was something uncomfortably brash and brazen about Hizen, like an unrefined Hardcastle, and his sunglasses-wearing aide was just unsettling, even if there was nothing outwardly wrong about her.

"I don't know why you insist on coming here if you're just going to tell your troops not to do anything," the Commander quipped from his desk.

"Don't worry, Commander. We'll be out of your hair soon enough. The new HQ should be finished by the end of the week," Hardcastle replied.

An Angel was attacking, of course. It was the Fourth Angel, Shamshel, if Rei's memory of the designations served. The defense would be handled by Unit-01 piloted by Shinji in his first battle, leaving her on the sidelines.

She was confident that everything would turn out well, though. Shinji had been trained well, and he had plenty of support in the command center, including their instructor. The odds of success were greatly in their favor. It was an opinion that didn't change when the Angel arrived and was engaged.

Then, suddenly, everything on the cameras went quiet. The only sound in the room came from people typing on their keyboards. All to the great confusion of the people in the command center.

"Check the lines. There has to be a problem with the equipment," Captain Katsuragi ordered.

The question was answered when sound was finally released through the speakers.

"**NERV! **. . . You laughed at me! You said my inventions were useless! Intergang said that they didn't measure up after they _squandered_ them against Supergirl! But I'll show them. I'll show you. I'll show you all! I will use my inventions to kill the Angel! Not the Eva! Me! Walter Shreeve!"

Shreeve, the name flashed through Rei's mind in recognition. She had seen an article of _The Torch_ about a scientist being kidnapped, and someone in Nerv's cafeteria mentioning his contract falling through. He was either being controlled, or he was trying commit suicide. Either way, he had to be saved.

_This_, Rei thought as she walked out of the command center, _is a job for Supergirl_.

* * *

Thanks to her super speed, Rei was out of the GeoFront and flying through the sky towards Shreeve in seconds. To her great surprise, he was wearing a suit similar to the one that the thug named Kenta had worn when he tried to kill her, but it was clearly much more powerful. It was firing sonic beams that were actually pushing Unit-01 and the Angel back.

"Shreeve!" Supergirl shouted as she touched down on the same roof as him.

Remarkably, he stopped firing and turned around to face her, allowing the two titans behind to continue fighting. She couldn't hear them still.

"Supergirl," Shreeve said darkly.

"Shreeve, we have to get you out of here; it's too dangerous," the Girl of Steel told the suited-scientist while advancing towards him.

"Yes, I suppose it is . . . for you."

"It's dangerous for you too. I'm here to get us both out of here," Supergirl replied calmly.

"No! You humiliated me in front of the whole world! Now I will show them that you, and Intergang, and Nerv, and everyone else were all wrong. I will show the world my true power . . . and destroy you," Shreeve declared dramatically.

"No," Supergirl replied, shaking her head. "No, I don't believe you want to do this. You can't. I've heard others talk about you, Walter. They say you're a good man."

"You heard wrong," he stated before raising his suit's arms.

Supergirl's eyes widened, and in the blink of an eye, she moved out of the way of twin beams of sound that tore apart the roof where she had been standing. The Kryptonian tried to fly around to grapple the mad scientist, but Shreeve fired another pair of sound beams at her. She dodged, and he fired his sound generators at the ground.

The building he was standing on was destroyed, but incredibly, he flew! Rocketing up into the air, Shreeve alternated beams to attack Supergirl. She dodged every one, but only barely. All the while, though, she was advancing, and when the time was right, she attacked with a burst of speed that allowed her to plow into Shreeve's suit at subsonic speeds.

"It's over," Supergirl said as they hurtled towards a part of the city where the Angel and Unit-01 were fighting, sound having come back to the world.

"Yes, it is," Shreeve replied before blasting her with his sound beams.

Supergirl screamed in pain, and let go of Shreeve to clutch at her head. The demented inventor hurtled out of her grasp and flew right across the nose of Unit-01. He fired his sound beams behind him, and when he reached the top of a building, the Angel sliced apart another building in front of him, sending rubble flying everywhere. The sonic sultan caught a piece with his sound waves and then threw it at the Kryptonian.

Supergirl dodged the massive piece of rubble but turned around to track it and felt her heart stop. Her super vision allowed her to see four people on the part of the central mountain that the piece of rubble was now flying towards: Hikari, Kensuke, Toji, and his sister Sakura.

"NO!"

With speed only she had, Supergirl smashed through the sound barrier and flew in front of the rubble block. Incredibly, luckily, miraculously, she caught it in time, just a few meters above the heads of her classmates. Unfortunately, Shreeve wasn't far behind, and he hit the ground with a tremendous crack.

"Run to the sewers!" the Girl of Steel yelled as she held up the block. "Go! Now!"

She saw and heard them leave, and somehow knew they would make it out alive.

"A noble gesture, Supergirl, but you cannot fool me," Shreeve declared. "You care not for those around you, leaving a trail of broken bodies and shattered lives wherever you go."

"You're wrong," she retorted simply before chucking the piece of rubble at Lake Ashi.

"No, I'm not!" Shreeve yelled back. "I'm not wrong! Try and dodge this!"

She moved forward cautiously, ready to dodge, only to stumble as sound pulsed out from Shreeve in all directions. She staggered back and could feel her teeth rattling. It was like the first Shriek all over again. He stepped toward, the sound coalescing into a focused beam on her.

"Do you know what's happening right now, Supergirl?" he asked conversationally. "Your skull may be impenetrable, but it also serves as an excellent medium for transmitting vibrations... vibrations such as sound. That vibration is sending your brain rattling around, battering itself to jelly inside that skull of yours. You're essentially getting a thousand concussions a minute. Even your physiology can't withstand that for long."

He was right. He was also now less than a meter away from her, and the urge to pound him to a pulp emerged. But no. She couldn't - _ wouldn't_ \- do that. She lunged forward in an uncoordinated tackle, catching him across his midsection. As they flew through the air, her right hand lashed out blindly, smashing the sound projectors on Shreeve's hands. She flew to a part of the city where the Angel battle wasn't going on and dropped him.

"Now, it's over," Supergirl declared.

"No! No, you're wrong!" Shreeve shouted before raising the damaged projectors to fire at her. They exploded, and an adrenaline-fueled moment of slow motion Supergirl saw what happened with her x-ray vision.

A feedback loop started in Shreeve's helmet. If it continued for just a few seconds ,he would be rendered permanently deaf. In an instant, Rei remembered Lois' words and acted.

She flew towards Shreeve as quick as she could and yanked his helmet off of him. She then grabbed him and flew towards the nearest hospital. Supergirl smashed the doors down and flew in, finding only someone on a television screen.

"This man needs medical assistance!" she declared.

The man on the screen jumped at the sight of her and hit a nearby button. "Put him on a stretcher. We'll be up momentarily to collect him."

The Girl of Steel found a nearby stretcher and laid Shreeve down on it.

"You saved me. Why?" he asked of her, small amount of blood leaking from his ears as he did so.

Rei looked at him, and tried to find an answer, before realizing that there was only one. "Because everyone deserves the chance to change for the better."

* * *

Rei had a slight smile on her face as she closed her locker door. Shreeve had been taken away by the doctors, who had in turn called the T3PD. They had told her that his hearing had been saved, and she had breathed a sigh of relief.

She hadn't been lying when she had told Lois that she didn't want to hurt anyone. All she wanted to do was help.

"Feeling reflective?" Diana asked.

Rei spun around and looked up to find the pilot's DI towering over her. Diana was, strangely, smiling. The blue-haired girl was more surprised than anything.

"Open up your locker again. I think it's time for another spar," the black-haired woman told her.

Rei sighed internally, but still spun around again to get her gym clothes.

* * *

Later that night, she was sighing externally as she lay in bed. Diana had ended up winning most of their sparring matches, but Rei had managed to land a few wins herself. Not only that, but she had also learned more CQC techniques, and Diana promised her that they would start on weapons the next day.

She wasn't sure if Lois would approve, but she was still an Evangelion pilot. The work on Unit-00 would be completed soon, and when that happened, she would need to be prepared to use all the tools in her arsenal. That was for the future though.

For the present, Rei just curled up in her bed and went soundly to sleep.

* * *

Cody's A/N: This chapter was a bit of a drag this week, mostly thanks to the conversation with Lois. I was making little progress till my ma commented that Lois and Rei's conversation being awkward is only natural given that they're both neophytes to their new rolls who never expected to be in them. I guess that just goes to show that if your parents were/are nerds then it would behoove writers to listen to them.

General A/N: This week marks the last time simultaneous updates will be given. At least one update a week will still be given out, or we'll try to at least, but our team needs to have time to do other things. Four (soon to be five, and then six, and then seven) updates a week is just crazy as far as a schedule goes.


	8. Issue 8

Issue #8

Written by Cody Fett

Edited by Cyclone and Ash

SOESOE

"We've got to get help, sir," Oryoku pleaded over the phone as he nervously twirled his pencil in his hand. The Intergang leader of the Tokyo-3 branch was sitting at his desk, waiting for the end. The old school Yakuza leader was sure that it was only a matter of time.

"_Is Supergirl that much of a problem? I was able to survive living in Metropolis with Super_man_ for over a _decade_,"_ the voice on the other end of the line said hotly.

"Yes! She is that much of a problem!" Oryoku was many things - a murderer, a tax cheat, a thief, a rapist, a drug dealer, a money launderer, a liar, a hate-monger, a terrorist of the fear variety, a brigand, a smuggler, a raider, a lawyer, and a vandal - but a master of overstatement was not one of them. "She has been relentless. Absolutely relentless. She started small when she first appeared a month ago, but ever since that harlot Sawyer got to her, it seems like all she ever does is attack us. Now, someone else is attacking our assets, and they've left Batarangs at the scenes of their attacks, which means that either Captain Boomerang is in business again, or the Batman is back. Sir, there's no way we can stand up to a revitalized police department, Supergirl, _and_ the freaking Batman!"

"_. . . A month. That's all it took? Very well, I'll bring in something special with the reinforcements,"_ the voice tiredly. _"I mean, if you really need the help, I guess I could also . . ."_

The line suddenly went dead. Oryoku looked at the phone in shock and started looking around for what the problem could be. He found it when he looked up and saw a blue suit, and confirmed it when he continued to look up and found the signature S-shield of the House of El. The face of a young woman, lips turned down in a frown, her eyes covered with a reflective gold visor, and her whole head framed up neck-length black hair. A phone line was held in her right hand.

"You really do need help, but what you get shall not help you," Supergirl said before raising back her fist.

SOESOE

"Mercy!" one of the Intergang thugs cried before getting hit in the head by a light tap from Supergirl's foot. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

_They seem to have given up fighting_, Supergirl mused as she shifted targets.

They had been going at it for a few minutes after she had taken down their leader, and already, the morale of the defenders had been shattered. A punch here, a kick there, and suddenly, they were all running. The Girl of Steel stopped that by inhaling deeply, and then blowing. The hurricane force winds that resulted from that simple act blew all the escaping criminals over and into walls.

As they lay on the ground groaning, her super hearing picked up multiple vehicles approaching. They were sending in reinforcements. It was, the Kryptonian freedom fighter mused, good that they were coming to her. It would mean less fuel costs for the T3PD.

A trio of the vans Intergang seemed to prefer slid into the parking lot of the abandoned factory and skidded to a stop. Supergirl tried to use her x-ray vision to see inside them, but it appeared that their insides were lined with lead… not that she had to wait long to find out what was inside them. The back doors of the vans opened, and Rei's eyes widened at what walked out.

A trio of cracks ran through the parking lot as three towers of metal stood tall. They were big, they boasted advanced alloy armor, and their look brought to mind Medieval knights and World War II warships. They were US Army M-45A4 powered armor suits, and they were armed with massive energy weapons and sporting Intergang insignias.

"_Fangs out!"_ the lead PA trooper called out in a mechanically masculine voice.

Supergirl flew off to the side, just barely dodging a green laser that burned through the area that she had just been standing in.

_Powered armor! They have powered armor! It's an obsolete model, but there's still no way that they should have that!_ Rei shouted in her head as her mind scrambled to figure out a way to beat them.

The green laser was almost certainly kryptonite-based, or something close enough that they felt confident going up against her. She would have use all her speed and reflexes to get inside their firing arcs so that she could use her super strength to tear the armored shell of the M-45s wide open. All she had to do was get the right angle.

As she flew out into the sky to observe the battlefield she realized that she would not be getting a good angle. All three M-45s were wearing glowing projectors all over their bodies, and every single one of them was shining red. It was a tell-tale sign that they had brought red sun projectors to the fight. The situation was certainly . . . sub-optimal.

She could fly away. Avoid a fight completely and go on hitting softer targets, but she would still have to face them again. Not only that, but if she ran, she would give Intergang a boost to morale that could invigorate them to launch a coordinated attack on the city's police department and citizenry.

It was something that Ayanami Rei would not allow. As a pilot or as a superheroine, her colors didn't run.

Her mind made up, the Girl of Steel swooped back down into the factory and grabbed one of the stamping machines. Her fingers dug into the metal, and she lifted with all her might. Though she was still unsure of how it exactly was possible, the stamping machine responded to her wish and lifted up out of the ground. The multi-ton machine rose above Supergirl's head, and with a mighty heave, she threw it at the trio of PA troopers.

The grin on her face rapidly disappeared as she realized that she had struck a killing blow, replaced with abject shock and horror. She moved to intercept it, but her shock and horror soon found new cause when the massive stamping machine glowed orange and red before being cut apart by a trio of green beams of coherent radiation. The remaining pieces of the massive machine were caught or punched out of the way by the hulking suits.

While Supergirl repositioned, the powered armor wearing criminals acted. Two of them launched into the air on columns of roiling plasma, while the third sprinted through the factory floor, bounding over that which he didn't simply smash through. The two jump jetting criminals came down through the roof near where the Girl of Steel was plotting, catching her in a pincer movement.

As they aimed their rifles at her, she dodged with all her speed. The emerald lances of light flash-sublimated the ground that she had been standing on, but she was already gone. Her reaction times were slowing, though, and both Supergirl and the criminals knew this. The longer she was exposed to the red sun radiation, the lesser all her powers would become. They would not tire, they would not rest, and as long as Supergirl held to her principles and refused to kill, they could not be stopped, and would not stop until she was terminated.

_NO!_ Rei cried in her mind. _There has to be another way!_

Her brain, adapted to quick maneuvers at c-fractional speeds, began running a light-year a second. A dozen plans began to formulate in her skull, and they only grew in number. Her attention was split between positioning and planning, and it was going to kill her. She needed to focus, to cut through the clutter, and she looked to the past for inspiration. What would Mr. Kent do?

With a start Rei, remembered reading about and seeing video of her predecessor blowing and creating a freezing wind so cold that it could cover an entire area in ice. That could freeze up the electronics of the red sun protectors and give her the opening she needed to close in. Could she do it, though?

She figured that there was no better time to try out. She flipped around and skidded to a halt at an intersection, inhaling as deeply as she could even before she had stopped. Though she had felt it few times in her life, Rei focused on the feeling of cold. The touch of Doctor Hikawa's stethoscope, the heights of a Tokyo-3 skyscraper on a cloudless night, and the furious winds surrounding the Fortress of Solitude, she concentrated those memories and feelings into the bigger and bigger pit of air in her body. When one of the Intergang PA troopers came around the corner, she blew.

A massive wave of freezing air flooded the corridor, glaciating everything in its path. Water in the air collapsed into ice crystals, forming snow. Glass cracked and buckled along with metal and plaster at the sudden temperature shock. The powered armor wearing thug just had a split second to look surprised before the wave hit them.

The armor was covered in ice crystals, the paint on it flaked and broke. The projectors covering its body froze, and their internal components shattered. The armor itself was made of sterner stuff than that which surrounded it and was mostly undamaged, mostly because the hydraulic servos driving the machine locked up as several safety mechanisms kicked in. The criminal inside apparently overrode them, because the servos on the arm holding its gun started to burst.

Supergirl smiled triumphantly as she caught her breath. She had taken one of them down. Now, she just had to repeat the procedure with the other two.

A lightning fast punch struck her in the side of the head and launched her through two walls into the parking lot. The Girl of Steel skipped like a pebble across the pavement, eventually impacting one the Intergang Humvees parked there in the side. She looked through bleary eyes to see the criminals stepping through the hole she made in the wall to aim their lasers at her. They thought it was the end, and it certainly looked like it.

"_Any last words, Supergirl?"_ the lead thug taunted, knowing that there was no possible way for her to dodge now.

"I don't think so!"

A gold circle cut through the air and sliced through the laser rifle of the lead thug before ricocheting off one of the trucks and back into the hands of . . .

"_Wonder Woman!"_

"In the flesh," Princess Diana of Themyscira replied with a smile as she put back on her tiara. She stood atop one of the cargo trailers, hair blowing in the wind and hands on her hips. The sunlight glinted off her clothes, as if to accentuate her golden virtue.

"Get her!" came the call from a dozen mouths. The unarmored criminals had apparently gotten their morale back from finding out that they weren't facing a Kryptonian anymore and opened fire. Wonder Woman grin just got bigger.

She lept into the air and dodged most of the fire coming her way, and what she didn't dodge was deflected by her iconic ceremonial bracelets. The laser blast from the sole remaining PA rifleman was one of those shots, being bounced off one of her mirrored bracelets and into the truck that had been the deflection point for her tiara earlier. It was ordered chaos, and most of the thugs were starting to have second thoughts. Most of them.

"Holy smokes! I'm part of a plot that's being foiled by _Wonder Woman_!" the lone thug with a beard declared.

"You don't have to sound so pleased," the thug with a tattoo above his left eye said.

"I'm sorry, but this is just a such historic moment that I can't help but geek out," the bearded thug said happily. "This is the first time in 14 years that a cape from the original Age of Heroes has made an appearance, and it's _Wonder Woman_, and she's thwarting _us_! Oh, my sister's a huge fan, I can't wait to tell her all about this. . . . Oh! Is she going to use it? She is! The Lasso of Truth!"

Indeed, Wonder Woman had wrapped the lariat around the chest of the PA thug with the gun and had begun swinging him around. Those still conscious ducked and dodged as lasers ineffectually burned through the air. Finally, when the centrifugal force was strong enough and the powered armor was zipping around the parking lot at a fair clip, the Amazing Amazon let loose. The screaming thug plowed into his compatriot, sending both sprawling into the ground a hundred feet from where they had been standing. The red sun projectors on both of them were crushed and sparking.

"Hey, where's Supergirl?" the tattooed criminal asked.

As if she was the Devil himself, the Girl of Tomorrow appeared in front of the criminal as soon as her name had been said. He barely had time to look astonished before he was knocked out cold by a swift punch. As he fell, Supergirl caught his gun and properly deactivated it just as she had done to every single one of the other criminals still in the area, then grabbed the bearded criminal.

"Aww! I wanted to be taken out by Wonder Woman!" the criminal whined. Supergirl was visibly confused, but she complied with the request and threw him over her shoulder. "I can die happy!" he cried while flying through the air.

Wonder Woman saw him coming and knocked him out with a punch before bringing him to the ground. She then quickly raised her left arm and deflected a green laser aimed for her head into the ground. The first PA thug to be relieved of his rifle and propped himself up from under the body of his lassoed comrade and aimed a laser pistol at the Amazonian princess. Before he could fire again, though, his helmet was ripped off by Supergirl from behind, and he was hit with a swift punch to the back of the head.

"Good job," Wonder Woman complimented upon seeing that everyone was knocked out.

"Thank you," Rei replied, her heart fluttering. She was, she admitted to herself, more nervous than most of her classmates on test day. How could she be anything else?

Before her stood Wonder Woman, one of the original three superheroes and an icon for a whole generation of young girls. Rei had heard nothing but good things about her, and as far as she was concerned as she stood there in her iconic star-spangled one-piece, the princess lived up to every bit of hype. She had so many questions that she wanted to ask the older woman. _Are you really her? Where did you come from? Where have you been the last fifteen years? Why are you in Tokyo-3?_

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be?"

"What?" Rei asked confusedly.

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be?" Wonder Woman repeated. "I can wrap things up here for the police."

The wig-wearing girl suddenly realized that she was on the verge of missing an important appointment. "How-? No, I'll ask later. Thank you, Wonder Woman!" Rei called out before flying off into the sky.

As Supergirl flew off into the sky, Wonder Woman shook her head and muttered under her breath. "I've got to teach that girl some time management skills in the next session."

SOESOE

As Rei floated in through her bedroom window, she couldn't help but sigh in exhaustion. It wasn't that she was actually exhausted, but it felt like the appropriate thing to do somehow. People did that, right? Sigh artificially in order to express an unrelated feeling? It certainly sounded like something the children at her school would do.

In any case, musing like she was prone to would not get her super suit clean, nor would it get herself clean, nor would it get her ready for work at Nerv, etc. etc.. She just had to get along with her normal life and focus. It was a task that was getting both easier and harder as time went on, thanks to her powers. Specifically, her mind.

Her brain, she had discovered, was capable of processing information far faster than a normal human's brain. It was a necessary side-effect of being able to fly at hypersonic speeds close to the ground. Unfortunately, while it meant that motion blur was a thing of the past for her, it also meant that ideas entered and exited her head at a terrific pace. Lois had taught her some of the focusing exercises that Clark taught her, but sometimes, it felt like it just wasn't enough.

Still, as she stood under the water gushing out of her showerhead, she tried to focus her mind, keep it on track. Unit-00 would finally be brought online that day. All she had to do was stay on time and open her heart to the Eva. If she could do that, then she would be able to join Shinji in the fight against the Angels.

As if on cue, her super hearing picked up knocking at her door. She turned her head towards it, water whipping from her hair as she did so. Her x-ray vision activated, and she peered through the wall to see Shinji opening the door to her apartment. Her heart froze and she scrambled to finish her routine. Ms. Lane had been right! She really should have changed her locks.

SOESOE

"Err, Ayanami! Are you here?" Shinji asked while looking around the cramped apartment.

"How can she live like this?" he asked aloud before noticing something on her shelf. It was a pair of glasses, warped and cracked in odd ways.

He walked over to the curiously and picked them up. They looked like his father's, but how had they gotten damaged? He put them on, and noticed that despite being cracked and ill-fitting, they didn't seem that bad.

There was a series of sounds behind him, and he turned to find Rei standing behind him, dressed in her school uniform. She did not look happy in the least.

"Ayanami!" he gasped out. Almost as soon as he did, the First Child reached out grabbed the glasses that were on his face. He was surprised and leaned back to dodge her, but in the process, he stumbled and slipped. He thought he was going to fall, but he opened his eyes to see that Rei had caught him by the shirt with her right hand, the glasses were in her left. She still did not look happy.

She brought him back to his feet and then walked past him to put the glasses back in their case, closing it after she did so.

"Why are you here?" she demanded.

"I-uh-um, brought you your new ID card. Ritsuko asked me to give it to you," Shinji explained, taking a little plastic rectangle out of his pocket and giving it to her.

Rei took it, and looked it over. Seeming satisfied, she went over and exchanged cards with the one in her bookbag.

"Thank you, would be the appropriate response," she dryly commented as she took up her bag.

"You're welcome," Shinji said unsurely.

Rei turned around and grabbed him by the shoulder with a strong grip usually associated with their sparring matches. "We must be off to Nerv now," she said in a tone that sounded both even and urgent.

"Oh, right!" Shinji replied, picking up the pace enough that Rei decided to let go. They exited the apartment at a rather brisk pace and continued like that for half a kilometer until they reached one of the entrances to the GeoFront. Rei slid her card through the turnstile, and Shinji followed soon after. They ended up going down the same unnaturally large escalator together.

_I should say something_, Shinji realized. "I'm, uh, sorry for earlier."

"For what?" Rei asked cooly.

Shinji paused. He wasn't sure what to say, so he changed the subject and hoped she wouldn't notice. ". . . Umm . . . You have a reactivation experiment today, don't you?"

Rei stayed silent for a moment before replying in an ever so slightly confused tone. "Yes. I do."

Shinji perked up at that and decided to push on. "I hope it goes well this time!"

"This time?" Rei asked, even more confused.

"Well, yeah, I heard that you were almost hurt in the last reactivation experiment. I figured you might be pretty scared for this time around," Shinji explained, as if it was obvious.

"You are the commander's son, are you not?" Rei asked with an odd tone in her voice.

"Yeah," Shinji asked, not sure where the conversation was going.

"Do you not have faith in your father's work?"

"Of course not!" Shinji answered hotly and on instinct. "How could anyone have faith in a man like him?!"

At this Rei turned around to face him, her eyebrows slanted in anger.

"Umm . . ." Shinji instantly regretted the turn the conversation had taken. There was a rush of air, and he looked to his left to see Rei's hand a centimeter from his face. The blue-haired girl then dropped the hand back to her side and flexed it into a fist.

"No," she said coldly, "you're not worth it."

As Rei turned around, Shinji couldn't help but gasp. That . . . hurt. It hurt more to hear Rei say those words than the slap ever could have.

SOESOE

Rei was still fuming when her entry plug started to fill up with LCL. She couldn't believe that Shinji would say something like that, but she had kept her anger in check at the time. Those harsh words would hurt a lot less than a slap from her ever would.

They would be starting the activation test soon though, and she needed to be ready. That meant clearing her mind of all distractions, preferably by finding something else to focus on. It was something Lois had taught her, that by keeping focused on one thing, she could tune out her mind's wandering, so she had brought along Commander Ikari's glasses and hooked them to one of the command chariot's fins where they were easily visible.

Luckily, she knew the startup sequence by memory, so she could do that on auto-pilot without looking like a crazy person.

"_Rei,"_ came the soothing voice of Commander Ikari over the commlink, _"can you hear me?"_

"Yes," Rei replied simply.

"We will now carry out Unit-00's reactivation experiment. Begin first stage connection," the commander informed her, his voice even and professional.

That was the side of the commander that most saw, the professional side, but that wasn't all there was to him. He had revealed to her a much gentler side that perhaps even he did not know he still had. The loss of his wife had damaged him greatly, and the relationship between him and his son would never be the same. She could change that, though; it was her destiny.

Destiny, she knew, was something many people believed in but were completely ignorant about. Not Rei. From the day she was able to understand the concepts involved, she knew that her destiny would be to bring the Ikari family back together, and she would harness the power of Third Impact to do it. She would not only save the family, but save the world from Seele and any others that would misuse such great power. Great power . . . like her Kryptonian abilities.

_That _she had not foreseen. She now had abilities and powers that some thought made her divine, but she knew different. She knew that she was all too frail and human, just like Mr. Kent had been. He still had gone out there everyday, though, risking his life and making the world a better place. She hoped that she would be able to live up to that legacy.

Would she be able to, though? The incident that morning with Intergang's powered armor troopers had made it abundantly clear that there would come a time when she would have to choose between her job at Nerv and her job as Supergirl. She . . . she didn't have an answer to that question.

For now, though, the synchronization test had passed the absolute borderline. She could now pilot Unit-00. She almost wished she hadn't been running on autopilot.

Then the alarms started to go off in the control center, though, thankfully, they were silent in the entry-plug. An Angel was approaching.

SOESOE

Not long after the alarm had first been sounded, Rei was streaking through the air as Supergirl. Her Eva, though she could run it, was still not sufficiently prepared for combat. Invincible or not, she did not want to get hit with whatever weapon the Angel had without any armor on. She'd be feeling the pain for weeks.

It was still moving into range of the city and the Eva, so she decided to wait and see what strategy the operations director came up with. If anything happened, then her position in orbit around the city would allow her to quickly respond to any problem rapidly. She was confident that things would work out though.

The Angel came into view, and Rei couldn't help but be struck by just how odd it was. Unlike every other Angel she knew of - all four of them, including the two that weren't public knowledge - it did not resemble an organic creature. Indeed, it did not appear to be any creature at all. It was a blue octahedron with a shining, reflective surface.

Scanning it with her x-ray vision showed that, despite appearances, it actually was an organic creature of some sort, but it also sported a Tokamak-style nuclear fusion reactor at its center. Though it was a primitive design, far less advanced than Nerv's own antimatter reactors or even a modern helical fusion reactor, the Angel had still somehow managed to find a way to not only make it work but work exceptionally well. The reactor seemed to power biologic anti-gravity drive systems centered around a drill shaft near its base, while also feeding into an energy projection system around the equator. It also sported sensor systems, what looked like a fantastically advanced computer system that was likely its brain, and an electronic warfare suite as well. It was a flying fortress, and completely organic, a unique lifeform that had never been seen before on Earth, and maybe would never be seen again.

For the first time in her life, Rei questioned if what she was doing was right.

SOESOE

"Supergirl has arrived on the scene," Fuyutsuki quietly said to Gendo from their position on top of the command tower.

"Then our victory is assured," Gendo replied calmly.

"How can you be so sure that she'll be on our side?" Fuyutsuki asked curiously.

"Teacher, you may not have faith in her, but I do," Gendo replied with absolute clarity. "If she's even half the hero her predecessor was, she will the greatest force for righteousness this city has ever seen. She'll do the right thing, even if we can't see it, of that I'm certain."

Fuyutsuki was taken aback by the seriousness and conviction in his old student's tone, but didn't have time to think about it before the action started.

"Eva Unit-01 is ready for launch," Lt. Hyuga called out from his position on the tower.

"Launch!" Cpt. Katsuragi ordered.

SOESOE

Rei noticed that Unit-01 began accelerating to the surface on the magnetic catapult system far away from the Angel, and watched it carefully. She also noticed however that the Angel had begun charging up its energy projection system. It had detected Unit-01!

The Eva reached the surface, and it and its pilot had barely a second to react before they were hit. They didn't react in time.

A thin and bright purple lance of energy shot out from the equator of the Angel and burned through the air. It hit the side of one of the old armored buildings on the East side of the city, and the aging warhorse incredibly survived for almost half a second before the top half of it was obliterated. Without even slowing down, the beam continued on and carved into Eva-01. The chest armor boiled away, and the energy beam began to directly attack the unit's core.

Inside the entry plug, Shinji was screaming.

In the skies above, Rei was horrified.

She was mad at Shinji, she admitted that. He had been a jerk; she hoped he could one day realize that. But he was still her fellow pilot and the commander's son. She had seen the aftermath of the Commander Ikari losing his wife and did not want to see what losing his son would do to him.

So, she stopped it.

Smashing through the sound barrier, Rei dove down as fast as she could and only stopped once she had intersected with the beam. She howled with pain, but endured for Shinji's sake. Unique lifeform or not, the Angel was hurting him. It was hurting her. It was hurting her _family_.

Rage like Rei had never known burned inside her. It blazed hotter and hotter, threatening to spill over the rim at any moment. Unlike many times before, though, she didn't hold it in. She stoked it and let it run free.

All of a sudden, her eyes glowed red, and out of them shot a pair of coherent beams of visible radiation that passed harmlessly through her goggles into the Angel's beam and, inconceivably, began to push it back. Rei poured all of anger and rage into her attack, and slowly but surely it began to push back the Angel's weapon.

The Angel, sensing what was happening, began to push more power into its beam, but it was too late. In one final burst of energy, Rei's heat vision punched through the Angel's beam, its energy projector, its armor, the shielding around its reactor, and out the other side. The reactor lost containment and self-destructed, robbing the rest of the Angel of power and setting off secondary explosions and fires.

The great octahedron, unique in form and function, was dead. Its massive body now fell slowly to ground. Eventually, it touched the armored earth with a massive crash, and then lay there still and burning.

Rei panted, adrenaline flooding her system, as she looked down at her shaking hands. She had saved him. She had saved Shinji, and likely the city, but at the same time, she couldn't help but think that she had done something horrible too.

SOESOE

"Chief, you called?" Lois asked after opening the door to her boss' office.

"Lois, come on in," Parry White, owner and editor of the _Daily Planet_, replied.

Lois did so, moving on into the office and taking a seat in front of Parry's desk. The office, much like its owner, had seen better days. Mr. White was now closing in on 80 years of age, but he still hadn't given up the fight, even in the face of the constant adaptation that needed to be done in the face of an Internet age. The office reflected that, showing more than a few chips and weathermarks.

"Lois, you've been in the business for thirty years; what do you make of this?" Parry asked, dropping two newspapers in front of Lois.

One was the_ Daily Planet_ issue for that day, the Metropolis edition. It showed a picture of a new heroine they had started calling the new Blue Beetle as she destroyed robots in Auckland, while at the same time splitting it with a far off picture of Supergirl using her heat vision to kill the latest Angel to attack Tokyo-3. The headline read, "Blue Beetle premieres while Supergirl slays monster!"

The other was a new one, with the stylized red logo in the upper right of the paper proudly proclaiming it to be _The Torch_, complete with what looked like a hand holding aloft an Olympic-style torch. The cover featured a split photo divided with rising V-like lines with a more dynamic picture of Blue Beetle on the left, a close-up of Supergirl firing her heat vision in front of the Eva on the right, and in the center was a picture of Wonder Woman standing in front of a bunch of defeated Intergang goons. The headline read, "A new Trinity? Blue Beetle keelhauls space pirates! Supergirl slices Angel! Wonder Woman returns! Three heroines, one day!" Further lines advertised an exclusive interview with Wonder Woman by one Aida Kensuke, information on the new masked menace stalking Tokyo-3's streets at night, and . . . recall election results for the representative of Tokyo-3 Municipal Middle School class 5-C?!

"_The Torch_ is a school newspaper from Tokyo-3, and they just kicked our butts," Parry explained.

Lois looked up from the paper, stunned. "I'm sorry . . . what?"

"You heard me," Parry reiterated. "A school newspaper that calls Batgirl a masked menace just beat our website for hits, and managed to sell a not insignificant number of papers in three languages. Besides that, their sources, stories, and presentation are just plain better than ours."

The old man got up out of his chair and walked over to his window overlooking Metropolis. "I've been in this business a long time, but I'd never thought I'd see the day where a school newspaper would beat us at our own game. It's a wake-up call."

"What do you want me to do, Chief?" Lois asked, going for the throat of why she was there.

Parry turned around and looked her in the eyes. "Back your bags, Lane. You're moving to Tokyo-3."

SOESOE

It was dark and raining when the Intergang jet pulled into the private hanger at Osaka International Airport. They were dry inside the hanger, but Oryoku almost wished he and the assembled Intergang muscle were outside; at least then, he would have an excuse to be shaking other than the bruises Supergirl had given him less than 36 hours ago. Mannheim's arrival was both a relief and a terror to him. Relief, because he would finally be getting help against the ever growing presence of superheroes in his city. Terror, because he knew that he had displeased his boss and would likely be getting assigned to a drug running operation somewhere near the nuclear exclusion zones in Pakistan.

The jet's engines finally shut down, and part of the assembled Intergang forces moved to assist with getting it secured. The door on the left side near the nose opened, and as soon as it stopped moving, a heavy foot stepped out. Bruno Mannheim had arrived, and as he moved onto the tarmac, he was followed by a man in a turtleneck sweater.

Oryoku bowed deeply as they approached. "Mr. Mannheim, thank you for coming so quickly. Things have gotten worse since we last talked. There is a new superhero they call the Blue Beetle on the scene, and Wonder Woman has returned!"

"Well, you've certainly mucked this up nicely. The whole city knows about us, morale has been shattered in a month, and you've lost three of our suits of powered armor," Mannheim commented dryly, walking past Oryoku. "Never mind. That'll be changing now that I'm in command."

The former boss of the Tokyo-3 Intergang branch swallowed. "Yes, Mr. Mannheim. Is there anything you need me to do?"

"No, no, I think we're done here," Mannheim said jovially.

Oryoku was about to respond but was cut off by a hand grabbing the back of his with an iron grip. He screamed, and was lifted into the air. he stopped screaming just long enough to hear Mannheim speaking.

"You've failed me for the last time, Oryoku."

The gangster started screaming again, but his screams did not last long before they ended in a wet crunch. His limp body and what was left of his skull dropped to the ground soon after.

"Good work, Metallo," Mannheim said, taking a wipe out of his pocket a removing a bit of blood from his face. "Just make sure you're a bit quicker with Supergirl. Wouldn't want to let her get away now."

"Of course not, Mr. Mannheim," John Corbin said conversationally. "We wouldn't want her to suffer, after all."

SOESOE

To be continued in Batgirl Beyond #5.

SOESOE

Cody's A/N: Well, this took longer than expected, but I had to work some extra shifts at work, and Supergirl in general is turning out to be exceptionally slow for me to write. Not tedious or hard, just slow. Almost makes me want to stop promising updates like people tell me to, but I doubt that will happen. That's because I know those promises are what motivate me to continue writing at a fast clip.

Now, the next big event will have four story updates centered around it, including a new story. Let's see how many of them I can crank out this week!


End file.
